REVIEW: APPRAISAL by Tim Marriott at The Tabard Theatre, Chiswick 26 March - 13 April 2024

‘satisfactory performance, some areas for development’ ★★★

Fifty years or so ago, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore had a sketch called ‘Lengths’ in which two office employees talked entirely meaninglessly, and hilariously, for ages about whatever work it was they were doing in whatever industry it was they were working in without it ever becoming any the clearer what on earth it was they did. Tim Marriott’s two-hander, Appraisal, at the Tabard, is set in that kind of office; the sort where a manager with no obvious function blathers on about protecting the brand and so forth while his poor underling waits patiently to get back to doing whatever it is she does. Annual appraisal time, never fun while it’s happening, often the source of satirical comedy about the meaninglessness of much modern working practice. 

Jo (played by Marriott himself) is the kind of manager who knows all the jargon, who can witter about toolboxes without having ever set eyes on a hammer. And Jo isn’t happy with Nicky (Angela Bull), even though he has to admit she’s a high performer who gets results, but not a ‘team player’ who’ll get out of the way so that his new girlfriend can have her job. So, Jo has a plan to move Nicky, but Nicky can outwit him with her wits behind her back and spends a cheerful hour turning the tables.

It’s funny and familiar and both actors are strong, particularly Bull as her performance develops from slightly crushed, bored employee into someone with a few cards up her sleeve. There’s some clever use of what might otherwise be a static set, too, with the pair of them basically sitting facing each other across a desk for most of the hour, but some satisfying movements into the power positions as the conversation ebbs and flows, particularly when Nicky impersonates Jo banging out a favourite cliché about smoke and mirrors from precisely the same place he’s twice said it.

Overall, though the play might rate as a satisfactory performance, some areas for development. While it’s inevitable in a two-handed battle of wits that points will be raised, batted back and moved on from, there are a few that seem a little perfunctorily placed purely for plot purposes (for example, Nicky accuses Jo at one point of more or less grooming her daughter, also an employee at the firm, but then swiftly moves on, which doesn’t quite seem how this particular, or any, mother would react). In addition, we receive every piece of information about the two characters at precisely the point when we need it, and a little foreshadowing or earlier hints of what is to come could make some of the comedy land harder.

That said, it’s a funny play performed well by two very strong actors with power shifting between the pair before a satisfying ending.

Photography by Charles Flint

Box Office: https://tabard.org.uk/whats-on/appraisal/

Reviewer: David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow), Better Together (Jack Studio, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, South Korea, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.