A Loud Attack on Corporate Culture

It’s taken a couple of decades, but the sharp edges of the American corporate model, complete with its lacerating detritus of downsized workers, overcompensated executives and dwindling industrial sector, are finally piercing the over-inflated European welfare state. “Top Dogs,” Swiss playwright Urs Widmer’s surreal and cumbersome take on the subject, now receiving its U.S. premiere at City Garage, captures the sound of the puncture--not a sudden bang, but a slow and exasperating whimper.

A group of high-powered Swiss executives, all of whom have recently lost their jobs, gather at a special vocational center for retraining. Through a series of bizarre role-playing exercises and other strange activities, the executives try to reinvent themselves in the image of the new economy. But mainly, these former “top dogs,” a howling and discordant lot if there ever was one, engage in emotional venting of the most histrionic kind.

Translated by Patricia Benecke, Widmer’s self-indulgent screed gets a lively if somewhat high-decibel staging from City Garage’s artistic director, Frederique Michel, who peppers the piece with so many primal screams that she should issue earplugs at the door. The result may be concussive, but it makes an impression: Michel’s anarchic momentum seldom falters, while the impressively syncopated cast executes its fast-action drills and movement sequences with military precision.

Charles A. Duncombe Jr.’s no-frills production design relies mainly on lighting to set the mood, but many scenes are murky to the point of inscrutable. However, when he’s not being too obvious about it, Widmer makes some cogent points about the violation of the social contract between business and labor, and the amorality of a system in which loyalty and the work ethic are little more than sad anachronisms.

* “Top Dogs,” City Garage, 1340 1/2 4th St. (alley), Santa Monica. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Oct. 14. $20. (310) 319-9939. Running time: 2 hours.