Review: The Interview
You’ve probably been warned not to wish for something too hard, or, it just might come true. The thing about wishes is that they’re always perfect, they’re conceived in one’s heart, and when wishing, nobody ever thinks about anything other than the resultant outcome – the realization of the wish. When a wish transcends to the realm of reality, a lot of things change. This here, becomes the premise for the play, ‘The Interview’ which follows a series of events in a day of a scheduled interview. It soon turns into a bizarre roller coaster ride through through the lives of the people involved.
What is most interesting about the play is that the script has crafted a normal corporate setting into something so much more deeper, darker and entertaining. The play commences when a candidate appears for an interview at a large corporate office. The interviewee, slightly eccentric, follows a line of questioning that is both trying and personal (yes, more trying and personal than normal interviews are). In fact, the interviewee goes so far as to hook the candidate up to lie detector (which eventually one learns is fake). The initial few moments are replete with laughter, the joke is on the candidate. The play exposes the way candidates usually react to an interview – especially the more enthusiastic ones like our protagonist here who is contrasted with another candidate (who, gets tired of waiting and leaves – serving as a foil to the protagonist).
As the play progresses, one realizes that this isn’t a normal office skit, rather, it is an intersection in the lives of a number of complex characters – the overly smart and zealous candidate, the bizarre boss, the desperate boss’s aide and the lovely secretary. The tables are turned (in the play, this is shown by a shift in seating positions) and the interviewee ends up getting interviewed by the candidate. The story cruises through the personal and the emotional toward an end the audience would’ve never expected in their wildest dreams.
Watch the play and the phrase ‘Cut throat’ gains new significance. Without giving much away, I shall leave you with that. But it isn’t just the story that enthralls you at the end of it all. There is very intelligent use of stage space and the settings are pretty well designed. It really does look like a corporate office and becomes half the reason why you’re transported into the character’s lives. An elevated space that has been transformed into the Boss’s room and the secretary’s space. Everything adds to it. There’s even the Scotch and the water that add to its credibility.
The plays left people gasping for breath, it has the ability to catch you off guard, and before you know it, you look around wildly at other audience members wondering if they’ve seen and felt the same things. They have. If there are messages I take back from plays, from this one it was – never be desperate for something, and even if you are, never use street-smart to achieve it.
