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An unsubtle satire about dismal losers: QUENTIN LETTS first night review of Saxon Court

Published: 01:32 GMT, 25 November 2014 | Updated: 11:41 GMT, 25 November 2014

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To the right of Ukip: Debra Baker as Donna

Rrecruitment agencies are no doubt ripe for satirical treatment.

As one of the headhunters in Daniel Andersen’s unsubtle comedy puts it: ‘We’re selling people to other people.’ You could almost say that recruitment is a genteel form of human trafficking.

The best thing in this show is a performance from Adam Brown, best known for playing a dwarf in the Hobbit films.

Here, he is Mervyn, a slightly useless but sweet-mannered employee from the Dartford branch of Saxon Court, a struggling recruitment firm. It is Christmas 2011 and business is dire. Mervyn has come up to the London office and may be about to be fired. With Mr Brown’s arrival, the show calms down a bit. Until that point its pace is overly frantic, the comedy and characterisation forced.

Playwright Andersen has chosen to depict the bottom end of the recruitment market. The workers here are vulgar plonkers and we should at least hail Sophie Ellerby, Alice Franklin, Scott Hazell and John Pickard for their energy.

Director Melanie Spencer needs to tone it all down by about a third. There is too much eye-bulging and shouting, too little deftness. Let the satire build. The writing makes that difficult. There is some coarse stuff about the office lavatory being blocked and the receptionist (Miss Franklin) having fake boobs.

The boss, Donna (Debra Baker), is a cussing tyrant, her politics to the right of Ukip. Miss Baker gives her a swagger but it swiftly becomes unbelievable that anyone would work more than five minutes for Donna. Mr Andersen is no doubt on to something by depicting the sexism, drunkenness, falseness and unhappiness of the grotty end of London office work.

But these sorry specimens are hardly major villains. A satire about dismal losers is never going to be as much fun as a satire about smooth, successful schemers.

For that reason, I wish Mr Andersen had chosen to make his comedy about top-end headhunters, the Saxton Bampfyldes of this world who extract vast sums from the public sector, Whitehall, the BBC and so forth.

Going after their vanity, their ruses, their jargon – their fees! – would have been braver and probably much funnier.