The Gronholm Method, Menier Chocolate Factory, London, review: A clever exercise in audience manipulation but not a whole lot more

Jordi Galceran’s black comedy is like a twisted cross between Survivor and Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, or Glengarry Glen Ross reimagined by Sartre. It first saw the light of day in Barcelona in 2003 since when it has been produced in 60 countries in 20 languages round the world.

The piece has clearly hit a nerve with its satiric portrayal of cut-throat corporate gamesmanship and of the tricksy recruitment techniques beloved of HR psych departments. It gets its belated British premiere now in this slick production directed by BT McNicholl which uses a spry translation by Anne Garcia-Romero and Mark St Germain.

The setting is a small conference room, with a skyscraper view, in a Fortune 500 company in New York. Four applicants for a high-powered sales job are dismayed to discover that they have been called for a group interview.

There’s snooty alpha male, Frank (Jonathan Cake) and genial Rick (John Gordon Sinclair) who doesn’t get any takers for his proffered Tic Tacs. They are joined by a couple of candidates who turn out to know each other from their Harvard MBA days – the cherubic Carl (Greg McHugh) and Laura Pitt-Pulford as Melanie, the one female contender (a bias that reflects the disproportion that still exists at this level in the corporate world).

Conspicuous by their absence are any interviewers. Instead, a filing drawer surreally opens at intervals presenting them with a written series of challenges. In the first test, it is revealed that one of the applicants is a mole from HR and they have 10 minutes to decide which of them it is. They are also left to figure out just what is being assessed by each ordeal.

Not all of these challenges pass muster dramatically. There are no surprises, for instance, in the weakly developed game where the four of them have to don wacky hats and argue the case for why their character (a bishop, a politician, a wrestler and a clown) should get to use the only parachute during an aeroplane accident.

As the stakes get higher and it seems that there are no depths to which the applicants won’t sink in order to humiliate their rivals, the challenges depend increasingly on the revelation of intimate details about each of them that might jeopardise their candidacy. The debate about whether the other three would hire Carl if it’s true that he has begun hormone treatment for gender reassignment is genuinely compelling for the unlovely prejudices it brings to the surface. Jonathan Cake as the conceited, continuously wisecracking Frank makes you feel that the character richly deserves being called “king of the assholes”.

I found myself admiring the skill with which the cast communicate the fractious atmosphere of mounting mutual mistrust (Cake and Pitt-Pulford have you on the edge of your seat with the nastiness of the mind games in their scene alone together). But you can’t really show how, in the dog-eat-dog competitiveness of the corporate world, people will betray anything to get on, if you create characters who hold absolutely nothing dear enough to betray – or, if they profess to, only as a bluff.

You may wonder how the unseen interviewers know all this confidential stuff and you may wonder… ah, but that would be telling. No spoilers, but there are twists and counter-twists. A play about manipulativeness that is itself a clever exercise in audience manipulation and not a whole lot more.

Until 7 July (menierchocolatefactory.com)