Multiple Bad Things
While the exploration of work's monotony and oppression isn’t groundbreaking in theatre, encountering a production that has something fresh to add is pretty exciting. Enter Back to Back Theatre, a company composed of performers who identify as having a disability or being neurodivergent. Their latest work, Multiple Bad Things, directed by Tamara Searle and Ingrid Voorendt, presents a narrative that feels distinctly original, universally resonant and plenty surreal. Back to Back Theatre is known for its attention to design, light and sound, and this production is no exception. Presented at Malthouse Theatre, the set features an industrial scaffold in the centre, an office desk surrounded by a spotlight and a stormy audio-visual oval in the background. Zoë Barry’s sound design, assembled from field recordings of ‘bad’ noises, and Anna Cordingley’s set, which requires physical participation from the actors, are invasive and discomforting in their sharpened minimalism. These elements create a paradoxical feeling of expansiveness and isolation, capturing the sense of being in a workplace at the end of the world, as promised in the program guide. The production opens with Simon Laherty, presumably playing the role of an indistinguishable and detached middle management figure, making it clear that this is theatre and not reality. Retreating to his desk, he spends most of the performance playing solitaire, watching animal videos and gaming – an emblematic portrayal of the mundanity
