2018 Fringe Review: Business As Usual

Business As Usual opens audiences up to an off-kilter corporate world with just enough grounding in both reality and absurdism to provide an hour of constant laughter alongside a satirical glimpse into mundane office life.

Creator-performers Braden Price and Morgan Grau (playing Johnson and Jorgensen, respectively) demonstrate the strong bond they clearly have both onstage and off. As two subservient office employees, their performances were witty, fast-paced, with every detail of their physicality choreographed to a tee.

The motif of bland office life pairs perfectly with the exaggerated setting of a cultish corporation. Grau and Price’s satire likely reflects the inner turmoil of real business people themselves, stuck between the desire to be perfect employees and the desire to break free from the confines of the business-formal capitalist world.

Although the script is hilariously excessive, it raises serious moral questions about working mindlessly for large corporations and the faceless authority figures who run them.

Grau and Price’s plastered-on grins and desperate attempts to impress the boss, as well as the show’s synchronicity, heightened physicality, and overall energy, make it quite a delightful romp in the most unsuspecting of places — a corporate cubicle.