Dundee Fringe 2025
Onboarding
Onboarding
Genre: Comedy
Venue: Sweet Venues at the Keiller Centre
Festival: Dundee Fringe
Low Down
A chaotic improv comedy interview process as four panellists attempt to be the successful applicant for a high end corporate job.
Review
The audience walks into the room and are welcomed by a suited executive with a microphone, this is our comedy host. He finds himself in a bind as he has two positions to fill in his organisation and four qualified candidates. He intends to put the candidates into two teams and interview them over several rounds. We the audience are his shareholders and his only judge. This is to be a business themed improvisational comedy gameshow where 2 teams are played off against each other in a series of chaotic and genuinely funny games. Our host is congenial, comedic and self-effacing. He immediately starts making jokes, commenting on his discomfort at having to wear a suit, welcoming everyone, setting the tone well. The only staging is in the form of chairs set in pairs at the back of the stage.
The Interview begins with a humorous review of each candidate’s CV with the host and the Candidate making light of each aspect. This was very funny and introduced each of the job candidates to the audience in a manner which allowed them to stretch their comedic and improvisational muscles. The next interview hurdle had the candidates explaining graph lines. They were given an unlabelled graph with two converging or crossing lines and two random themes each of they had to relate to one of the lines. The goal was to present their graph for two and a half minutes. Lots of very funny unlikely corporate correlations ensued. Then was a game of charades, business related of course. The audience was guessing and the host kept score lots of great physical comedy. The final round was a whose line is it anyway style line up where performers are given a line prompt as a group and must compete to come to the front and be funny. Classic improv comedy stuff which was very well executed. The show was rounded off with the scores which involved a lot of good-humoured disagreement. A little calculation found each team on 15 points however there were only 2 job positions available so they went to the shareholders and let our applause decide, many cheers later everyone was given a job.
This show is loosely organised comedic chaos. The format is very strong and it is clear a lot of thought and preparation has gone into the nature of the rounds and their content. The performers were very funny, had great chemistry and bounced off each other really well. Not every aspect was fully explained at the right moment, but we were all laughing too much for it to matter, its chaos is definitely part of its charm. For example, during the CV game the candidates didn’t seem to know the content of their CV and it wasn’t clear why, as each joke hit home this mattered less and less. After the segment was finished it was explained that each candidate had written a ‘CV’ for one of their peers and the host confessed that perhaps that should have come at the start. The format of the graph game had to be explained a couple of times, more for the candidates than the audience, but the explanations got the audience laughing and it was very funny in execution. When charades was introduced, there was confusion as to who the charade would be performed to; the audience, the other team member, or the opposing team. Our host confessed he hadn’t considered using the audience but that that was now what was to happen. So a smidgeon more organisation would go a long way but not too much, interactive reinterpretation and the witty exchanges they prompted epitomised the show. It felt like everything was open to change if it would get a laugh. There were a few jokes clearly intended for fellow performers and friends in the audience which were lost on me, it reminded me of a panel show where there’s a running gag against some of the panel members except I hadn’t seen any of the previous episodes. The audience all left on a high though, there was consistent laughter through the show and a positive buzz after it. I could see this show becoming a fixture at any Fringe.
