“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing, it’s okay.” – Don Draper, Mad Men
In a hotel
meeting room in 1977, somewhere in middle America, two businessmen meet for a
chat. They are both “ad men” shackled to industries that are slowly being
exposed as toxic. Bud works for a cigarette company. Glen sells cars. Glen needs
Bud’s advice – how to sell to a market that is slowly cottoning on to the
problems of lead in gasoline.
The two men
joust back and forth, but Bud has the upper hand. The tobacco industry has been
on the back foot for a while; television and radio advertising are out and
magazines are next to go. He has figured out a way to keep cigarettes on people’s
lips, even as the medical evidence mounts against his industry. Glen has some
guilt about the potential effects of gasoline-powered vehicles on the environment,
but those papers are still inconclusive.
Bud
suggests that Glen needs to sow doubt in the public’s mind. If the adverse climate
impacts can’t be definitively proven, then people will cling to their gas
guzzlers in the name of personal freedom. The same reason they smoke, even
though they know it’s bad for them. They’re addicted. It’s an extension of
them. And Hollywood still makes it look cool.
In the
opening minutes of Christopher Samuel Carroll’s new play Smokescreen, as
Bud and Glen stare at each other down the length of a conference room table, I
thought about Mad Men, the period drama about advertising men on Madison Avenue in New
York in the 1960s. I was worried that this play might suffer in comparison.
The series’
opening episode is called “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and sets character Don
Draper the task of creating a campaign to sell cigarettes to an increasingly
wary public. Don chooses to sell the product on its method of production. “It’s
toasted” is the tagline for Lucky Strike – making it sound healthy.
By the time
of Carroll’s play, Bud has been working for Big Tobacco a long time. Now that it’s
past being advertised, it has become a symbol. Bud can work with that. Smoking
is relief at the end of a long day, just like a stiff drink or drive in your
car. It’s a symbol of individuality. Nobody smokes them quite the same way. The
smoking of Humphrey Bogart is different to the smoking of James Dean.
Far from
being just a period piece, Smokescreen is grappling with where we are in
2025. This work doesn’t feel at all dated; it faces numerous present-day global
crises head-on. When were the troubles of this world seeded? What ignited this
lurch toward fascism and climate denialism and flexible truths passing
themselves off as news and science?
The dialogue is expertly crafted and the sparring is beautifully conceived. For a show where two characters duel mostly over facts, it never feels heavy-handed. It’s extraordinary to watch a one-scene, ninety-minute play that holds the dramatic tension for almost the entire time – only occasionally allowing some release with a laugh.
Bud is the
younger man, but there’s a lot going on behind his eyes. Damon Baudin is
superb, crafting a character who is so confident in his worldview, he sits for
over half the play watching his easily frazzled opponent.
Writer Carroll
plays Glen as dignified, but on edge. He’s already smoking when Bud arrives. He’s
drinking, too. He offers the other man a cigarette and a whisky, but Bud declines.
That rattles him. Later on, we hear his smoker’s cough and it’s so deep and
raspy, it’s shocking. The men might be on even ground in their careers, but
Glen has things weighing him down and we feel sympathy for him in a way we
never really do with Bud.
Played in
traverse, Carroll also directs this two-hander with well-judged subtlety. It’s
mostly head games for the two characters, and they are kept well apart for much
of the time – so when it finally gets physical, it’s impactful.
Lighting
designers Antony Hateley and Ash Basham trap the characters in warm
white light that evokes a smoking lounge more than a
boardroom. Some of the lighting chages feel unmotivated but there
are a couple of striking moments toward the end when the light follows the
characters toward the door and out into the world.
Smokescreen doesn’t suffer in comparison to Mad
Men; it feels like an episode out of a future season. It’s steeped in
history; two ad men knowing that what they sell is killing people and destroying
the planet. Even as Glen starts to catastrophise, he has no way of knowing how
long leaded fuel will remain or when the world will suffocate from
warming.
The play is
about how advertising lies to us and how industry can affect governments and
how politicians don’t look any further than the next election. It’s about where
the natural and political disasters we’re living through now began, while also
acknowledging that it didn’t start in 1977, either. Men in dark smoky rooms
have been ruining things for generations and perhaps forever.
Smokescreen is a cleverly articulated, full-bodied
protest against fake news and the climate crisis and late capitalism. Carroll’s
clear-eyed vision is skilfully realised. A stunning production.
Smokescreen is playing at Fortyfive Downstairs
this week only and closes on July 13
Photos: Nicholas Robertson
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