If Game of Thrones were set in the Severance universe, you’d get Beth & Ben’s Beth and Ben: Your Place in the Workplace at Braw Venues @ Hill Street – Dunedin Theatre.
Beth and Ben are Business Strategists, which seems to mean their primary job is inducting new employees into E.N.T.I.T.Y’s company culture. We, the audience, are the new employees, and we have all apparently failed to sign our names on our induction forms, but our scribbles, Xs, cigarette burns, and bodily fluids still count as legal consent and are still a type of initiative, so we are still employed.
Like so many workplaces, the CEO restructures the hierarchy whenever she wants and has now introduced an AI tool, A.R.I.A., to replace, er, to help Beth and Ben complete the induction. Beth is more vocal in her dislike of A.R.I.A. than Ben, who sees her as a useful tool (and possible good friend), though Beth is partially won over when A.R.I.A. helps her complete a project proposal Beth had toiled at for ages. A.R.I.A. does not, of course, have a sense of subtlety or sarcasm, so when the Business Strategists make accidentally risky suggestions to it, the AI ‘takes initiative’ and interprets these ‘grey areas’ in a mafia-like way.
While the creator-performers have stated that they wanted to create a character comedy that would take down AI, and they have certainly demonstrated the power of human ingenuity and dumb luck, the show is much more entertaining for its sketches than its overall narrative. Like many good, and dark, character comedies, Beth and Ben: Your Place in the Workplace has two middlingly skilled, middlingly ambitious characters who learn nothing and achieve nothing while comedically destroying a lot.
Subjectively, I’m not the biggest fan of shows like The Office or Office Space. But this absurd world goes so sideways into gallows humour, which makes it very worthwhile. Fringe is a great place for edgy shows, and Beth and Ben: Your Place in the Workplace suits its 10 PM timeslot. Check it out at Braw Venues @ Hill Street – Dunedin Theatre.
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