Another nightmare on Wall Street

The Grönholm Method (Menier Chocolate Factory) Verdict: Inhuman resources ★★★✩✩

JORdi GAlcERAN’S 90-minute The Grönholm Method is an extended sketch about the horrors of modern job interviews. yet the word ‘modern’ may need reconsideration.

Written in 2003, this argumentative comedy has, through no fault of its own, dated quite badly. it has repeated wisecracks about a man considering a sex-change operation. The roughness of the humour may reflect coarseness in the character who utters it, yet it is so politically incautious that you know it would never be countenanced by anyone hoping to join a modern corporation.

That character is Frank. As played by rangy Jonathan cake, he is a goodlooking professional who wants to become a salesman at some hotshot New york finance house.

He has arrived for an interview and the setting is a glass-walled office offering views of Manhattan.

Soon another candidate arrives — Rick, over-talkative and provincial, played persuasively by John Gordon Sinclair. Two people after the same job? Awkward.

Two more candidates arrive — carl and Melanie ( Greg McHugh and laura pitt-pulford). The plot soon acquires echoes of TV’s big brother. The four rivals receive instructions through a sliding filing cabinet. Typed notes tell them to play out certain challenges. it is during one of these games that we learn that carl hopes to become a woman.

Frank joshes and bullies him. Maybe that was par for the course in Senor Galceran’s Spain in 2003, but in 2018 in New york, it would earn you instant dismissal and worse.

The story has a couple of ingenious twists. The acting is strong, the production is shiny and the Menier is always a welcoming place. yet any satire of corporatism today surely needs to capture the creepy insincerity of its ostentatiously right-on hiring techniques.