Terry's: An American Tragedy About Cars, Customers and Selling Cars to Customers

In world where it’s “better to be dead than in the red,” the military precision of peak capitalism is captured in this slick comedy set in the sales team of a US car dealership. Top seller Sheila is a “Ford girl”, fresh-faced honours student Kelly is looking to earn her branded T-shirt, Henri from France needs to get this month’s bonus to pay for his visa application, and all of them are overseen by (Major) Tom who’s, in turn, overseen by the unseen and uncompromising owner, Terry.
With the brightly painted cartoon-like sheen of a freshly-sprayed bonnet, it pairs a Wes Anderson-style heightened reality with the potted production design of an attic-based Fringe show, including bunting, balloons and a glitter curtain swaying to the boom, boom sound of a marching drum. Developed from clowning (the company trained at Lecoq), Terry’s is sharply directed and punchily performed with a smartly scripted structure that turns marketing jargon into a hilarious and horrifying poetry. It rattles along as the team attempt to outsell one another using real and surreal strategies during the build-up to Memorial Day.

Making a killing and simply killing are never far apart in this American Dream-turned-nightmare, and the writing and performances that pastiche this are deliciously funny, with the real-life horrors of the US today rippling beneath the surface but never quite puncturing the tyres. While the ending captures the bleakness of individuals trapped inside an endless selling machine, the pain and destruction caused by the relationship between capitalism and war feels like it could be addressed more thoroughly through the serious collision that everyone is clearly heading towards. Pop goes the balloon, when what is really needed is a full-scale David Lynchian crash.

The Scotsman

It’s the late 90s and in a fictitious small town in Ohio, the sales team at Terry’s are trying to sell cars. It’s Memorial Weekend, the equivalent of a bank holiday weekend in the UK, with implicitly heightened sales opportunities.

A swirl of comedy, drama, music, song and physical theatre.

The team are playing heavily on the Memorial theme: stars and stripes adorn the lot and they draw ever-more spurious patriotic links with their deals on vehicles. The lead salesman Tom refers to himself as ‘Major Tom’. They shoot in-house television adverts, featuring superheroes and injecting razzmatazz at each turn, all with the purpose of creating sales leads.

They are under pressure though. The eponymous business owner has set sales targets; if these are not hit, the team will not secure essential financial bonuses. The pressure is layered, however. While Terry may be unseen, he looms ominously over proceedings akin to Wilson in The Dumb Waiter. It will be more than missed bonuses if targets are not hit, job security being fragile. Sheila has a teenage son demanding attention. Henri needs time to study for his citizenship test, not to mention money to pay for legal fees. Kelly is new to the team and is, initially at least, clearly not the aggressive salesperson that will thrive in this high-octane environment. Leads need to be converted to sales, of course.

As the weekend dissipates, the number of cars needing to be sold per day inexorably rises. The stakes are higher for everyone now and the team seek to deploy increasingly more desperate measures. Arthur Miller, while writing Death Of A Salesman, noted the “hopeless hope of the day's business”.

David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross depicted underhand sales techniques and there are some parallels in Terry’s: An American Tragedy About Cars, Customers, and Selling Cars to Customers. Tom drums into his team the “ABC: Always Be Closing” mantra. Yet, while some themes such as patriotism and consumerism are touched upon, this production centres on an examination of the American Dream.

All of the performances are consistently strong in this fine production. The BRILLIG company’s Lecoq training is evident, as the show is a fusion of comedy, drama, music, song and physical theatre. The pace is relentless, being a metaphor for the pressures the team face.

Broadway Baby