© Rah Petherbridge Photography
By Grace Hatchell
If you’ve ever had an email from HR beginning with “Just a quick chat…” and immediately started wondering whether you should clear your desk, Emma Davies may have created the Edinburgh Fringe show for you.
But you’ll need to be quick.
Today, 18 August, is the final day to catch You Are All Resources at the Edinburgh Fringe, with character comedian Emma Davies turning the rather unpleasant experience of losing her job into darkly satirical comedy.
And frankly, turning redundancy into a Fringe show feels considerably more productive than staring angrily at Microsoft Teams.
The inspiration came after Emma lost her job last September during a difficult employment climate. Rather than letting the experience disappear into the great corporate filing cabinet in the sky, she channelled workplace anxiety, corporate culture and her encounters with HR into a new character comedy.
Welcome to Remark Insurance.
Your Head of HR for the evening is Alllison Pope, who is attempting to deliver one final staff briefing before cuts are announced.
Everything will presumably be handled sensitively, professionally and entirely according to company policy.
Except, naturally, it all goes horribly wrong.
Alllison’s past, present and future begin catching up with her in a story very loosely inspired by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Instead of three ghosts, however, she receives visits from three women.
They are all called Carol.
And they all have an axe to grind.
Grace likes them already.
Through Alllison and her increasingly uncomfortable predicament, Emma takes aim at some very recognisable features of modern working life, including cultural fit, ageism and institutionalisation.
Emma says her own experiences with HR gave her the fire to develop Alllison Pope into a full satirical character, using comedy to find some levity in the frustrations and absurdities of organisations and workplace culture.
And judging by the response so far, Alllison has been causing a bit of trouble.
The Reviews Hub described the performance as having “a real bouffon energy” and called it “an on-point parody of the ridiculousness of HR.”
West End New Act of the Year, meanwhile, praised Emma’s combination of observed satire and outlandish performance, describing her character comedy as exaggerated yet remarkably believable.
That last bit might be slightly worrying for HR departments everywhere.
You Are All Resources has been running at Wee Container 1 @ Hoots since 7 August, but today is your final opportunity to catch it at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
So if you’ve ever survived a performance review, nodded enthusiastically during a compulsory workplace presentation, wondered what “cultural fit” actually means or received an email containing the words “organisational restructure”, perhaps spend part of your final Fringe day with Alllison Pope.
Just don’t tell her Grace sent you.
I don’t want a meeting with HR.
You Are All Resources
Emma Davies
Wee Container 1 @ Hoots
Final Edinburgh Fringe performance: 18 August
Emma Davies: You Are All Resources | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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