“Work Hard Have Fun Make History,” now making its Chicago premiere at First Floor Theater, is not a play about Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, insists playwright reid tang. It just so happens that its three actors — Sahar Dika, Jenn Geiger and Alice Wu — resemble Amazon warehouse employees as they pass cardboard boxes along a nonsensical assembly line, robotic smiles pasted on their faces. And the play’s title happens to be Bezos’ internal motto for his company. Oh, and large fluorescent letters spelling JEFF loom upstage.
Billed as an experimental dark comedy about the absurdities of late-stage capitalism, tang’s 2023 play is a big swing for director Tina El Gamal and company. Some of the satire is sharply funny, especially in Dika and Wu’s shared scenes as two rich dudes called Jeff and Elon. The production design is also a highlight, particularly the work of scenic designer Spencer Donovan and props designer Lolo Ramos. However, the chaotic vignettes and disjointed text that dominate the runtime sometimes feel too much like weirdness for the sake of being weird.
The playwright frames the show as “a catalog of all the possible phone calls that exist,” and the first half-dozen or so short scenes consist of voiceover dialogue loosely related to the action happening onstage (sound design by Jae Robinson). A woman calls customer service after she orders a charging cable, but a miniaturized version of her late husband is delivered instead. An online shopper tries to win a bidding war by explaining their macabre reasons for wanting to purchase a secondhand police baton. A prophetic messenger tells a stranger that her daughter will die — or rather, is dying at this moment — due to a loose roof tile falling on her head while she scrolls through swimsuit options on her phone.
The actors’ movements directly correspond to some of these voiceovers, but at other times the connection is more abstract, such as when Wu mimes gorging on a large bag of packing peanuts. Of course, it’s unfair to expect everything to make sense in absurdist theater, but this play seems deliberately obtuse at times. The themes of corporate exploitation and personal isolation generally come through in the tone of the piece, but the humor wasn’t really landing for me early on.
This changed when Jeff and Elon made their first appearance, having just escaped to their space bunker after leaving behind the screaming masses of humanity. Dika and Wu’s performances are not meant to be exact impersonations, but the intended targets are clear, with their aggressive man-spreading and exaggerated egomania. More on-the-nose signifiers include Wu’s black Tesla hat and tented-fingers pose. Incidentally, this is the first scene where the actors speak their lines live onstage.
As the two billionaires try to justify their guilt over letting family members, employees and strangers perish back on Earth, they also start dreaming up grandiose business schemes for their blank-slate society in space. When Elon brainstorms a near-instant delivery service, Jeff complains, “You’re stealing my life’s work!” Unsurprisingly, it feels like a small dose of catharsis to laugh at these caricatures of men who hold so much power and wield it so heartlessly in the real world. Their stage time is limited in this play, but I’d happily watch a full-length buddy comedy with Dika and Wu in these roles.
Another notable element of this production is Donovan’s set, which features floor-to-ceiling walls made of cardboard boxes, with nooks occasionally opening to dump a pile of Beanie Baby toys, for example. In another moment of physical comedy reminiscent of a famous scene from “I Love Lucy,” a conveyor belt delivers a stream of boxes faster than an employee can handle them. Props continue to pile up onstage in a visual commentary on the waste of overconsumption.
Even if the play as a whole doesn’t hold together, audience members who enjoy the absurdist genre and unconventional takedowns of capitalist culture should find “Work Hard Have Fun Make History” worth their time. For better or for worse, this show certainly isn’t afraid to get weird.
Emily McClanathan is a freelance critic.
Review: “Work Hard Have Fun Make History” (2.5 stars)
When: Through June 6
Where: First Floor Theater at Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St.
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Tickets: $10-$40 at firstfloortheater.com
