Person Spec review

Inspired by writer Andy Owen Cook’s own experiences of redundancy, this production from Forest Sounds takes a darkly satirical look at modern job hunting and its toll on our souls.

Marion (Inés Collado) has come for an interview at Zantion Recruitment, an organisation that brightly promises to help candidates maximise their potential and become “the CEO of their own lives”. But as she is forced to jump through an increasingly convoluted series of hoops to identify the role that she is best suited for, the interview starts to take a very dark turn. Is the audience there to reward this hopeful candidate – or push her even further into despair?

The central idea is smart and, in Alfie Heffer’s production, cleverly executed and designed. The video and digital team (Peter Martin, Michael Cook and Aaron Mears), working with graphic designer Jingyi Yu, lighting designer John Rainsfoth and composer Cameron Naylor, capture the slick, glossy feel of modern capitalism. The use of cutesy memes to seem simultaneously hip and approachable, the relentlessly upbeat tone, the constant assurance that “everyone matters” from a system that doesn’t even bother to learn to pronounce Marion’s name correctly – all feel grimly familiar; so, too, does the over-reliance on tech, and the inability to cope when it breaks down. The system is always assumed to be right, with no room for individual human nuance.

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