HR the Musical, coming to Auckland's Q Theatre on November 6, takes a satirical look at the experiences of workers in the modern corporate world.
HR the Musical, coming to Auckland's Q Theatre on November 6, takes a satirical look at the experiences of workers in the modern corporate world.
Review by Amy Mansfield
THREE KEY FACTS
HR The Musical, inspired by workplace experiences, combines comedy and satire to critique corporate culture.
The show features an all-female cast and will be performed at Q Theatre in November.
Audiences have described the experience as “hilariously relatable”
Amy Mansfield is the writer/director of HR The Musical and a former HR professional.
OPINION
A friend once said of working in the corporate world, “You can handle it just as long as you drink the Kool-Aid, but when you stop doing that, it’s allover”. Suffice it to say I never drank the Kool-Aid, though they plied us with it in cocktail form at one place I worked, and for a time that dulled the pain.
These days I find comedy to be a much more satisfying remedy for, well, just about all ailments, inside and outside the world of work, both paid and unpaid. And, taking inspiration from the musical comedy of Tim Minchin, the TV series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and, further back in time, Victoria Wood, I decided a couple of years ago to write HR The Musical to bring into a mad comedy hour some of my own work stories, some I’ve heard from others, and some I’ve just unabashedly concocted for kicks.
One of the most confounding and ridiculous aspects of modern workplaces is, of course, the incomprehensible jargon people are forced to speak in, and as a writer, that’s probably what gets my goat the most. I wrote a Modern Major General style song called Corporate Anthropologist Blues in response to the proliferation of opaque job titles out there:
A data gynaecologist / (What the hell’s that?)
A dollar angelologist / (You must be taking the piss)
Plagued - as we all are - by a deluge of digital communications, I couldn’t resist penning a Latin plainchant translating passive-aggressive emails:
As per my email / (Can’t you read?)
As I’m sure you’re aware / (We all know you’re pretending)
And an aria about being transparent with co-workers (Have I Told You Lately You’re a C***?) - you can probably guess the refrain.
So much of this language is (wittingly or unwittingly) so risque, it seems to be gagging for a satirical burlesque treatment. One of my faves from the show is a raunchy number referencing the so-called “global all-hands meeting”.
I’m feeling so fragile / I wanna get agile / With you baby / Tonight
I’m feeling so hot / I wanna go hot-desking / With you / All night.
HR The Musical is a new show that reflects the lived experiences of "everyone in the corporate world", writes Amy Mansfield. Photo / Supplied
I always laugh when I hear that phrase, “Bring your whole self to work”, as though you might turn up one day and realise you’ve left your elbow at home. I reckon if people actually brought their hearts and minds to the office as well as their bodies (if they’re even doing that) it would engender a wholesale revolution, the likes of which no management training course can prepare you for.
Corporate lingo is so pervasive these days, we sometimes forget that it’s largely a bunch of arse. (I just about lost it when the intermediate school I was looking at sending my son to started talking about “adding value” to the children, like they were planning to auction them off at the end of term.) But when you set it to a beat - and add a Bridgerton-style string trio and an alto sax - like we’ve done in HR The Musical - it suddenly becomes much clearer.
We go pretty hard in this show - and sometimes get quite fantastical - taking the mickey out of the kinds of cringey work situations most of us can recognise at some level. We’ve been delighted that audiences have referred so frequently to their bodily fluids in describing their responses to it: One person said watching the show is “like lancing a boil”, another that they were laughing so hard they “nearly wet their pants”.
I’ve worked in all sorts of offices around the world and in Aotearoa, in the private and public sectors; so have my cast for this show. Totally by coincidence, half of them have actually worked in HR. I don’t think that’s strictly speaking Method acting, but it makes for a pretty authentic (if you’ll excuse the term) show.
One cast member who worked in a recruitment firm tells the story of her boss walking through the office slapping a ruler on each worker’s desk, shouting, “MAKE. MORE. MONEY!”
That sounds a bit tasteless and militaristic to our fragile ears these days, but the cultishness of modern organisations remains, even if it’s masked in statements of organisational “values” like “boundarylessness” (yep, for real - that’s where your contractual terms are nothing more than a starting point).
In a year or so, we might be replaced by robot actors, but for now we humans are performing in the flesh for the people and culture of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, and we look forward to sharing the resource of that most human thing, humour, with you and your workmates.
HR The Musical plays at Auckland’s Q Theatre from Wednesday, November 6 to Friday, November 8, 6.30pm and 8.30pm
