REVIEW: WINDFALL by Scooter Pietsch at Southwark Playhouse until 11 March 2023

‘many laugh-out loud moments and physical gags’ ★★★★

Five office workers in one of those offices where they do some kind of mindless data processing task with minimal creativity and a high rate of bored errors. One of them has a vision: if they plough just the right amount of money into the Lottery, the $500 million jackpot will get them out of their lives of quiet desperation and away from their boss from hell.

Scooter Pietsch’s frantic comedy gets its UK premiere at the Southwark Playhouse after runs in its native USA, and Scooter’s written a hoot. It’s Lord of the Flies meets The Office runs the publicity material, identifying the kind of high concept beloved of screenwriting manuals but that’s also pitch perfect as the prospect of all that lovely money wrecks friendships, trust and hair, arms, trousers and fancy dresses.

The clock is also ticking, literally and on stage, as the two-act play runs its course from hungover routine morning (‘Someone kept buying me martinis last night’ – ‘Yeah, that was you!’) to multiply entertaining final twists. Mark Bell, directing, previously worked on the brilliant Play That Goes Wrong, and give the man an office full of staplers, paper cutting boards and shredders, and mayhem will ensue. It’s an utterly familiar scene to anyone who’s worked in any kind of office and knows the tedium of word processors and the camaraderie of escaping to a bar at the end of the day to dream of the Caribbean islands or Maseratis your $100 million share would instantly provide.

After a solidly engaging and funny first act with perhaps a few too many long, long monologues, the jokes come flying thick and fast in a turbo-charged second act as the dream and the friendships unravel, and the author finds unexpected twists in an entirely familiar landscape that result in many laugh-out loud moments and physical gags. It would be unfair to single out any of six great ensemble performances (Judith Amsenga, Audrey Anderson, Jack Bennett, Joanne Clifton, Wesley Griffith and Gabriel Paul) and entirely fair to praise the fluency of the quickfire dialogue between friends who share a workspace in common and not much else, and particularly the choreography of the increasingly manic final sequences as their relationships unravel. And it’s worth noting interval entertainment for those who eschew the bar as Ella Blackburn, in her first professional role, makes the most of cleaning the office overnight before the rest of them return.

In spite of the hysterically funny cartoon violence that eventually ensues, this is a humane, good-natured, play about our wildest dreams and the disappointment that they never quite turn out that way in the humdrum of daily life. Highly recommended.

WINDFALL by Scooter Pietsch

Directed by Mark Bell

Southwark Playhouse     

9 - 11 March 2023

Box Office: southwarkplayhouse.co.uk /020 7407 0234

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, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, Joy Goun award, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.