It’s heartening to see how so many production companies have embraced the opportunity to perform on the virtual stage while their real ones have been made out of bounds by COVID. The Extra Credit Ensemble are one such company. Their farce Bard Overboard featuring a hapless band of cruise ship actors with delusions of grandeur, is, virus permitting, headed for the actual Edinburgh Fringe stage in August. This Global Pandemic Holiday Special is made especially for online performance and shows the same motley crew tasked with making an uplifting publicity video for the cruise line while quarantined and bored on board ship.
Written by Harris Solomon and directed by Alexandra Haddad, Bard Overboard: A Global Pandemic Holiday Special casts a critical eye on the oft-satirised corporate world. The toe-curlingly hyperbolic and earnest video which opens and concludes this performance contains all the cliches which are recognisable to anyone who has seen a real TV ad for a cruise line.
Fun is also had at the expense of the faceless corporate voices trying vainly but ineffectually to keep the actors ‘on message’ throughout the recording. Jane Walsh and Solomon and Haddad, in cameos, have all pretty much nailed the humourlessness and faux sincerity so familiar in business speak.
The Zoom format rehearsal works well as a way of introducing us to the characters gradually as they each join the meeting on camera and their personalities and resentment towards their employer’s practices are revealed. As with all good conference calls, as sharply observed and witty as the dialogue is, almost as funny are the actions of the other characters when one is speaking. Indeed, it becomes almost too distracting. Sophie Poole has Cam’s coquettish fiddling with her hair and lipstick down to a fine art and Jerry (Surya Buddharaju) proves a dab hand at slapstick from his revealing entrance onwards! The hand sanitiser and tissues strategically and prominently placed at the front of Tom’s (Nate Jones’) is finely observed although his constant and ostentatious sneezes and coughing fits are a little overdone.
The three former cruise passengers add an even more surreal dimension to proceedings that just about falls on the right side between satire and grotesque parody. Dan (Joel Meyers) is floundering and weak, Emma (Maya Weed) is creepily weird and Rachel Greenfeld’s portrayal of Barbara, Dan’s mum, borders on the macabre. Greenfeld does get to utter the great line when asked what she liked best about cruising with the company – “Cruises are great for old people!”
Bard Overboard: A Global Pandemic Holiday Special may not win any prizes for originality in satire but at 30 minutes length, it certainly provides a diverting little knowing giggle which in these “rambunctious” times, is always welcome.
