Review: BRILLIANT JERKS, Southwark Playhouse Borough

It might have been Hoover that first so inveigled its way into our collective consciousness that their brand name became a verb. Since then, we've had a few more (Tweet and Google most obviously). But perhaps the most recent arrival in this marketers' pantheon refers to a ride-hailing company, an app that you tap and it gets you home, its name consigning the verb taxi to pilots on runways.

Joseph Charlton's biting comedy, Brilliant Jerks, takes that new wedge in 21st century culture as its starting point and weaves three interconnecting narratives into a pacy 90 minutes that comes to Southwark Playhouse some five years on from its premiere at the Vault Festival (a theatre start-up incubator currently under threat).

We follow Tyler, who saw the business's potential looking down on Paris after a drink or two too many; Sean, who works in Head Office, the geeks' geek fixing the code the lesser geeks write; and Mia who drives the rides, with a bumpy past and a wobbling future. Shubham Saraf, Sean Delaney and Kiran Sonia Sawar play all three protagonists in their (separate) stories and also all the support roles of board members, fellow workers and obnoxious riders. With scenes sometimes only a few minutes long, there's potential for confusion, but director, Katie-Ann McDonough, keeps a tight rein on things and the actors find enough differentiation in roles to help us keep the balls in the air.

Crucially, we engage with the characters. We know that Tyler's ruthless and relentless drive to succeed will bring him down and, though he deserves it, we can feel for his disappointment. We can sense that Sean is just a little too nice and a little too naive to survive once his talent takes him into places where swimming with sharks is inevitable. We know Mia's past, eating away at her mind, is going to catch up with her and make an impact on her late 20s happy compromises. We can see that jeopardy and it's fun watching how it plays out.

The problem with the play is that it's all just a little too familiar, the ground having been covered extensively in novels like Bonfire Of The Vanities, documentaries like Triumph Of The Nerds and films like Steve Jobs and Sorry We Missed You. We know the 'ambitious to the point of madness' young tycoon; the outsider in a toxic environment full of outsiders who chooses not to hack it; the person getting herself back on her feet and frightened of sliding back. The laughs land and the satire bites, but one feels there's an opportunity missed to find something really new to say post-pandemic, mid-cost of living crisis.

Got to go - my driver is only three minutes away...

Brilliant Jerks is at Southwark Playhouse Borough until 25 March

Photo Credit: Nick Rutter

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