If you’re one of thousands of Londoners who spends nine to five staring at a computer screen, making regular trips to collect work from the printer and relying on regular tea rounds to maintain your alertness, BLAM! could be just what you need after a long hard day in the office.
Imagine if Post-it notes were cigarettes, your swivel chair had the capacity to become a high-speed vehicle and the hat stand in the corner doubled up as a machine gun? Granted, it’s difficult, but BLAM! does exactly that, transforming everyday working life into an anarchic rampage with more dramatic deaths than a game of GTA5.
It all begins in an ordinary office, where the day’s highlights include petty lamp thefts, stamp and stapler high fives, and blocked toilets, but when three employees and one jealous boss grow tired of their daily routine they decide to liven things up by morphing themselves into gun-wielding superheroes with nothing but stationery and office furniture for armour and ammunition.
Featuring a score that fuses Iron Maiden and AC/DC with ballads and waltzes, the production interweaves action movie violence and the classic goody/baddy antagonism with a far from conventional love story involving a walking water cooler to create a show that is as hilarious as it is preposterous.
Though devoid of dialogue, the show’s performers are brimming with character, from writer and producer Kristján Ingimarsson as the bold-as-brass leader of the pack and Didier Oberle as his number one sidekick to Lars Gregersen as the vulnerable office geek and Janus Elsig as their try-hard superior, each of them conveying their personalities with little more than an occasional grunt or expletive.
Packed full of film references that are sure to please testosterone-teeming members of the audience, the action-packed evening combines jaw-dropping physical feats with flawlessly timed movements and comic sound effects to give a lesson in how to turn your workplace into a playground.
It should probably come with a safety warning though. Don’t try it at home… or work… especially if you want to keep your job.