It’s 48 year-old British comedian John Gordillo’s first time playing New Zealand, so he tells us, and he’s been enjoying the apparent lack of hype, compared to the cutthroat hyperbole that the Edinburgh Festival shoves in your face at every venue’s doorway.  This preliminary by-the-by observation is pertinent to the basis of the show, which explores the lengths to which marketing divisions of large companies will go to monopolise the consumer needs of everyday people. 

Citing a number of actual instances, with projected documentation to back it up, Gordillo presents a wholly cogent argument with the earnestly intellectual countenance and commanding gesticulations of a middle-aged English and drama teacher.  Early on he declares that reviews are essentially meaningless, so it’s nice he gave me a ticket anyway … More specifically, he’s dismayed by the relative criteria for star-ratings (which Theatreview doesn’t deal in). 

The upshot of John’s bugbear is the disingenuous ‘friendly’ tone that corporate brochures, catalogues and cover letters frequently and increasingly take, from their special offers ‘just for you!’ to their ardent requests to rate their service, even if they’ve just sold you a chocolate bar.  It might seem obsessive or a tad paranoid at first to be so hot under the collar about it, but it’s the subject of his show after all, and a great deal of humour is derived from what is on reflection a truly appalling trend in today’s media. 

He seems concerned we don’t quite get the full depth of the point at issue. Perhaps, like many things, it’s by degrees more intense and ubiquitous in larger populations like Britain and Europe, but we get more than our fair share of such deceitful propaganda aiming to make us feel ‘valued’ by them, in return for our loyal custom. He’s done his homework too, dropping geographically interchangeable names like Palmerston North and Colin Craig into humorous analogies for disappointing and/or ridiculous things. 

Gordillo compares the practice and the mixed feelings of guilt and resentment it causes to his worst relationships, highlighting the agenda of these marketing tracts to actually fool us into believing they are interested in a meaningful emotional connection with us.  He contrasts this with his own genuine relationship with his adopted daughter who apparently very rarely expresses any emotional connection, at least not a loving one, yet in his heart he knows it’s there.  

I gather the ‘defenceless’ in the title refers to the regular saps to whom the corporate behemoths’ cheap shots (pseudo-emotional dogma) are marketed.  The moguls of such immense business luminaries as Tesco’s or Burger King are hardly defenceless (Palmerston North maybe…), and Gordillo’s shots are not cheap; they come at the significant cost of suffering through so much bureaucratic patronisation to develop this clear and convincing rebuttal.

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