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 of the stereotypical office job. Soon, three employees – Bron Batten, Sarah Mainwaring and Scott Price – take to the stage. Price nonchalantly lounges on an inflatable flamingo, leaving the other two to tackle the monotonous job of assembling the twisted structure that works to obscure and ultimately complicate the dynamics between the characters.
Batten and Mainwaring’s characters initially form a bond, but this camaraderie soon morphs into something more ominous as the play unfolds, with Batten using the guise of victimhood and ‘care’ to exert dominance. As tensions mount, the trio discuss oppression, identity and politics. Politeness falls away as agitation sets in, and each character discovers and exploits the others’ triggers. Here, power dynamics are in constant flux, especially between Batten and Price, who antagonise each other to the point of harm. This in turn affects the third member of the trio, reflecting the reality that marginalised individuals do not necessarily share the same needs or get along.
There’s a lot to deduce thematically in the play’s tackling of power, identity and intersectionality both within workplace structures and more broadly, from commenting on who makes the rules, to the nuances of oppression, and how vulnerable people remain at the mercy of the very systems that oppress them. These themes are layered within micro-aggressions, metaphors and phrases like "you people". The overuse of the word "respect", as comically echoed in a repetitive phone script towards the play’s end, is a powerful example of politically correct language and inane bureaucracy that promises inclusion but perpetuates the opposite.
Tonally, the show strikes a menacing yet hopeful tone, entwining moments of deadpan hilarity. And thankfully, in its capable hands, we’re not simply hurled back into life's dark void at its conclusion. Instead, it leaves us with the metaphor of solitaire – contemplating how we win, how we lose and how sometimes all we can do is try again. In this way, we find connection.
Multiple Bad Things is playing at Malthouse’s Merlyn Theatre from May 29 until June 9. Tickets are on sale now at the Malthouse website.
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