Enterprise - Brian Parks
“Run GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS through a Monty Python spin cycle and you might get Brian Parks’s kinetic farce ENTERPRISE, an absurdist express train of comic corporate-speak…
Four ambitious businessmen in a skyscraper—the bespectacled Weaver, the fresh-faced Sanders, the somewhat dim Owens and the experienced Landry—entertain big dreams of impressing the unseen chairman of their imperiled company with a proposal that will send profit margins into the stratosphere.
But over a night the men spend collaborating, then pairing off into two rival factions, their hopes rise and fall in a stream of bluster, invective and recriminations.
Their exchanges arrive in a succession of 45 rapid-fire blackouts, many introduced with pings and other audio snippets that suggest, say, a text alert, or a news-radio bulletin, or an office copier. Among the many concerns preoccupying these fatuous climbers are the suspiciousness of uncentered mimeographs; the “smell” of diminishing value; the Depression-era allure of jumping out a window; and the perceived vulnerability of office toilet stalls.
Conspicuously absent from the discussions are mentions of home, family or women—as spouses, relatives or colleagues. (“Astrology is astronomy for girls”, says Landry dismissively.) No surprise there: These men live only to compete with and impress one another (and their boss). No one else has any place in their displays of would-be brainpower and self-consuming testosterone.
…The true star is Mr Parks’s dialogue: If a joke doesn’t hit its mark (and some are simple non sequiturs), another one lands before you have time to notice.
Mr Parks, a former theater editor at The Village Voice and an ex-chairm an of the Obie Awards, is noted for the fast pace of his work. ENTERPRISE comes off a 2017 run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it won a Scotsman Fringe First Award. The playwright’s hapless executives may not qualify for a raise, but his ENTERPRISE merits a promotion.”
Andy Webster, The New York Times
EAN: 9780881457971
“Run GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS through a Monty Python spin cycle and you might get Brian Parks’s kinetic farce ENTERPRISE, an absurdist express train of comic corporate-speak…
Four ambitious businessmen in a skyscraper—the bespectacled Weaver, the fresh-faced Sanders, the somewhat dim Owens and the experienced Landry—entertain big dreams of impressing the unseen chairman of their imperiled company with a proposal that will send profit margins into the stratosphere.
But over a night the men spend collaborating, then pairing off into two rival factions, their hopes rise and fall in a stream of bluster, invective and recriminations.
Their exchanges arrive in a succession of 45 rapid-fire blackouts, many introduced with pings and other audio snippets that suggest, say, a text alert, or a news-radio bulletin, or an office copier. Among the many concerns preoccupying these fatuous climbers are the suspiciousness of uncentered mimeographs; the “smell” of diminishing value; the Depression-era allure of jumping out a window; and the perceived vulnerability of office toilet stalls.
Conspicuously absent from the discussions are mentions of home, family or women—as spouses, relatives or colleagues. (“Astrology is astronomy for girls”, says Landry dismissively.) No surprise there: These men live only to compete with and impress one another (and their boss). No one else has any place in their displays of would-be brainpower and self-consuming testosterone.
…The true star is Mr Parks’s dialogue: If a joke doesn’t hit its mark (and some are simple non sequiturs), another one lands before you have time to notice.
Mr Parks, a former theater editor at The Village Voice and an ex-chairm an of the Obie Awards, is noted for the fast pace of his work. ENTERPRISE comes off a 2017 run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it won a Scotsman Fringe First Award. The playwright’s hapless executives may not qualify for a raise, but his ENTERPRISE merits a promotion.”
Andy Webster, The New York Times
EAN: 9780881457971