Windfall ★★★ Southwark Playhouse | Feb 9 - Mar 11, 2023


A job that is tedious, a personal life that is humdrum and a boss who is a tyrant! What's the solution? Obviously, it is to win the lottery. This new play from writer, Scooter Pietsch, shows how the dreams of five employees at a data entry firm in Columbus, Ohio turn into a nightmare when they pool their money to buy tickets to win a multimillion dollar jackpot. To no one's surprise, their shared wager turns into an experience demonstrating that greed can shred a paper-thin office camaraderie pretty quickly. The first act builds rather slowly and the humour is mainly based on the verbal abuse that the boss, Glenn, played by Jack Bennett, heaps upon his hapless staff. The second act has several twists, but now the comedy is centred around the office mates' physical abuse of each other. As suspicions grow that someone has cheated on the group's deal to share the winnings, the supposedly funny violence escalates to some unexpected levels. If you found, and enjoyed, the 'black humour' in American Psycho, then this is a show that could work for you; for others however, it might seem a rather gruesome meditation on human hypocrisy and greed whose mirthfulness misses the mark. So, if you're stuck in what seems to be desperate situation, the lessons to take away from Windfall might be: the odds of winning the lottery are low, human beings can be viciously greedy and the definition humour is quite personal.

Rated: ★★★

Reviewed by J.C.
Photo by Pamela Raith.

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