An excoriating satire of graduate ambition and corporate greed
Recent graduates Alex (Josh Gordon) and Rachel (Maddie Frutig) are fully immersed in the London rat-race, negotiating insurance deals from their high-rise offices. Alongside the early-morning tube journeys and musty night-buses, anger and frustration dominate their lives. Resentful to be giving so much and receiving so little in return, their lives feel soulless and draining. So when an opportunity to seize their ambitions and whiplash into a promotion well above their station arises, it looks tempting. All it will cost is their integrity. A two-hander with heavy reliance on dramatic monologue, Go Feral Like the Big Dogs dismantles the corporate dream sold to so many young people with humour and drama, in a compelling production held back by uneven pacing.
Alex and Rachel resemble the least likeable candidates on The Apprentice: dripping with ambition, prepared to do whatever it takes, and ever-ready with a one-liner (“men work better when they have a semi”). Gordon and Frutig capture this arrogance adeptly, particularly when monologuing both sides of a conversation. As Alex is called for a meeting with his senior partner, lightning-fast pivots between outraged inner monologue, deferential employee and frustrated boss are impressive. A wordy script cramming multiple ideas into long sentences doesn’t prevent writer-performer Gordon from crafting biting lines. Alex’s boss is “like someone’s eaten Michael Gove” and Rachel captures corporate thinking: “there is no team, there is the work you produce”.
This brings a biting satire to Go Feral Like the Big Dogs, but also renders its duo difficult to sympathise with. As their story fills with drama, this narrative of horrible people doing horrible things never justifies why the audience should care what happens to them. More damaging, many of the show’s best lines are delivered rapid-fire, particularly at its outset. This apparent attempt to build intensity has the opposite effect, robbing sharp observations of their power and denying laughs time to land.
By contrast, slower-paced scene transitions are more effective, with Alex and Rachel moving dreamlike against high-octane soundtracks. A particularly powerful moment ejects the audience from one such transition into the consequences of the pair’s ambition, with a roaring explosion followed by a prime ministerial statement on the news.
As a dismantling of the corporate mindset, Go Feral Like the Big Dogs is effective. But failing to present any alternative through either its characters or story results in a lack of purpose that makes the show forgettable. It seems to sense this, with a middle act composed of dueling monologues – Rachel bumps into a boring, needy ex; Alex plots his rise to prominence – which are entertaining, but do nothing to move the story forward.
The general sense of anger and frustration about the lies sold to graduates by the corporate world resonates, feeling sharply contemporary and recognisably real. And there are flashes of brilliance: pointed lines in the script; precise sound and lighting cues; a wonderfully dramatic final moment. But without the confidence to give key story beats the space to sink in, and in the absence of an alternative to the soul-crushing reality of Alex and Rachel’s lives, the show never fully earns the impact it aims for.
Go Feral Like the Big Dogs ran at the Union Theatre from 5th-6th February. This run has now concluded.