REVIEW BY ALYSSA MCDONALD SMITH
EDITED BY AZMY
Above Sea Level took to the Guild Theatre from 7th – 9th of May to welcome us into Saskia Powles’ humorous dystopia The Office at the End of the World. Written and directed by Powles, the play follows the inner workings of a seemingly mundane office branch who’s ‘normal’ is thrown into turmoil after the introduction of a new AI agent NYX (voiced by Lilly Hall). The office workers all slowly descend into a state of insanity under the guidance of the AI, with chaotic and unexpected turns appearing in every scene, epitomising Powles’ goal of making sure the play is “very silly” and hopes “you’ll leave with more questions than you started with.”
The acting performance from all the lead roles was of exceptionally high calibre for student theatre. Walking into the theatre, I had the privilege of a handshake and greeting from Manager (Dan Fonn Prichard), welcoming me to enterprise industries. His ominous enthusiasm from the get-go set the tone for this eerily comedic office scene, with his beaming pride for a mediocre office space reminiscent to that of office media icons such as Michael Scott from The Office or Mr. Milchick from Severance. However, this eerie positivity translated excellently in the Manager’s decent to insanity, with Prichard leaving the audience questioning at all times whether his optimism was genuine or insane. The play follows the workings of the Manager and his fellow coworkers when their everyday routines are usurped by the introduction of a new AI tool. Some lean into it, whilst others oppose, but its omnipotence inevitably leads to the destruction of workplace relationships, and then ultimately the workplace itself. Each of the lead cast epitomised stereotypical office archetypes – Maya Hall-Davis as Girl Boss, the go getter career woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants; Will Martin as Old Timer, the traditionalist with a devoted work ethic to quality and results who won the hearts of all the audience; Robbie Thompson as Intern 1, your stereotypical vape addicted Gen Z nepo baby who creeps his way under everyone’s skin; and Joelle Noar as Intern 2; the try hard people pleaser intern whose sing song optimism poorly conceals her people-pleasing tendencies.
These cast members powerfully convey how these archetypes would descend into insanity. Girl Boss, in particular, succumbs to an insatiable greed for power and kills her young coworker who NYX promotes to power on account of her obedience. Characters such as Old Timer, on the other hand, are simply wiped from the company and corporate pawns Intern 1 and manager end up grovelling at the feet of Girl Boss. Powles’ chaotic narrative raised larger questions to the audience surrounding how much AI can actually do. As they noted in their directors statement, AI is nothing without the human spark to fuel it, and consequently cannot cope with the chaos, motives and emotions that humans hold inside. However, for me this play went deeper, and lead me to question further how the villain itself was not necessarily the AI, but actually the CEO (Brij Shah). His intentions catch us off guard in the opening scene with an intimate moment with a fellow businessman, with talk of money paired with erotic self-pleasure. This conversation set the undertone for the entire show – there would be no AI without his desire for optimisation and therefore money (the one thing that gets him off), and without this capitalist mindset, Girl Boss wouldn’t have killed Intern 2. So, at the end of the day, Powles has highlighted how really, AI is just a tool for corporate greed which seeks to treat humans like machines, and her skilful writing accentuates this.
Campbell Jordan and Henry Nguyen compliment Powles’ script with the construction of a stark office landscape. Greeted by a large desk to the right and a platformed managers office to its rear, the audience is led to question the large absence in the rear stage left. However, this was swiftly answered by the arrival of NYX in the form of a giant box, making the audience believe that the office felt incomplete before its arrival. This environment was enhanced by Cecilia Liu and Stuti Ghosh’s co-lighting design, elevating the juxtaposition of the chaos of the office in comparison to its mundane, bring white light state.
Each character was assigned a colour which followed them throughout the play – added in their costuming (designed by Charlotte Henderson, with the assistance of Naya Ikram), incorporated in the captioning, and most notably through the light of their phones that projected onto their face. These colours reflected elements of their personalities – yellow for the warm and gentle Old Timer, red for the powerful and dangerous Girl Boss, green for the greedy and immature Manager, purple for the arrogant Intern 1 and Pink for needy Intern 2. This lighting was complimented with immersive soundscapes by Nick O’Brien and Chloe Bausor and engaging and effective audio-visual design by Claire Lim, especially in the construction of the AI interface screen to provide a sense of characterisation. Projections such as the wordle display made the audience feel deeply apart of the office, and as if the were integrated, not just observing from afar. However, I felt the movement of the large desk to the centre of the stage by Old Timer and Girl Boss was sometimes distracting due to the large size of this prop and therefore would momentarily break the audiences away from the office immersion just to offer an aside. Instead, the asides from Old Timer and Girl Boss could have been delivered from the original location of the desk, with spotlights focused on these characters to signal to the audience that the character was stepping away from the main plot. Ultimately however, the staging and technical work for this production was of a very high standard, keeping the audience hypnotised by the stage.
Above Sea Level has well and truly proven that audiences should expect nothing less than quality engaging theatre from their company, and the whole cast and crew should be enormously proud of what they have put together. I’m excited to see what they put together next – it will not be an opportunity to miss!
Above Sea Level’s The Office at the End of the World played at the Guild Theatre 7 – 9 May, 2026.
ALYSSA MCDONALD SMITH is a third year Bachelor of Arts student majoring in English/Theatre Studies and Criminology. Driven to student theatre through her love for set design, she is seeking to broaden her involvement in the uni theatre scene.
AZMY is a creative studying a Bachelor of Arts at UniMelb. This year, they are making theatre with The Werkz Emsemble and Cipta Theatre company!
The Dialog is supported by Union House Theatre
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