Office Party

The office party is, presumably, a fixture all over the world but it seems to have a special place in British culture – perhaps because we generally find the whole social intercourse thing so tricky? In any case, it makes a fine template for a site-based cabaret-theatre piece. Welcome, then, to Product Solutions' annual bash, where the audience stands in for the employees and variously OTT department heads are played by the company; there's also cracking entertainment-within-the-show from Duckie veterans Christopher Green (aka Tina C and Ida Barr) and Ursula Martinez (of 'La Clique'), who wrote the show with Cal McCrystal (director of the original Barbican production). It's all a bit flimsy as drama – more of a situation than a story – but its strengths lie elsewhere. The performance space is also a bar, with the trappings of authentic booze, cheesy tunes and stilted sociability present and correct, and the night works very well as structured entertainment, with party games and histrionics building to a crescendo that blurs the is-this-part-of-the-show? line and goes out with a bang. Plus you don't have to look at your fellow revellers over the photocopier the morning after.