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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
