A grabby title and a clear concept sell tickets at the Edinburgh fringe. Australian comedy duo James Schloeffel and Charles Firth have gone the extra mile by giving their show its own logo, a middle finger that raises flamelike on a screen in their workplace presentation. The pair play consultants, here to navigate us through – and often just swear incessantly about – the hellscape of office politics, meaningless business jargon and interminable meetings, which this hour regrettably begins to resemble.
Fittingly, the first part is about standing out from the crowd. Having swiftly sacked (or “de-hired”) a bloke in the front row, they present a guide to exaggerating work experiences for his CV. Ever had a bar job? That means you’ve “managed a portfolio of liquid assets”. In the first of several games with the audience, we then guess the job from the highfalutin description. It’s initially amusing, then over-extended, with flatly unfunny bits on Jesus and Hitler’s LinkedIn profiles. Later, a passive-aggressive email is offered up as the cause of the war in Ukraine and there are similarly flippant references to the Post Office scandal, none done with any nuance.
The suspicion swiftly grows that this is a sketch stretched too far or a scenario in need of a wider cast of characters than our two consultants. It shifts up a gear when Firth dons a beard to play Abraham Lincoln, fielding insufferable comments from colleagues in a Track Changes document of the Gettysburg Address. Might Abe fire off a 25-word version for socials?
There is no shortage of relatable material here, including a lively section about the tactics of deflection used in meetings. A fun skit uses “reach out” and “circle back” as dance moves at primary school, stressing the infantilisation of the workplace, but all that jargon lampooning grows tiresome. Circling back, I withheld my stakeholder buy-in, with the key ask of my topline thought being: can I put that time back in my diary?
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 26 August
