Jean Tong’s Do Not Pass Go is Kafka for the modern corporate age
- Written by Sarah Austin, Senior Lecturer in Theatre, The University of Melbourne
In the shadow of Franz Kafka’s visionary dystopian fiction, the faceless, hierarchical machinery of bureaucracy has long served as a symbol of quiet, grinding despair. Kafka’s institutions are at once impenetrable and absurd, systems that trap individuals in a perpetual tension between resignation and the faint, flickering hope of change.
Playwright Jean Tong’s Do Not Pass Go sits in this tradition, offering a sharp, often darkly comic examination of conformity and resistance within the modern corporate structure.
Penny (Belinda McClory) and Flux (Ella Prince) are an unlikely duo thrown together on a surreal production line. Flux is a new recruit, still learning the rhythms and unspoken rules of the nameless organisation. Penny is a seasoned employee who has survived the most recent round of redundancies.
From the outset, they appear mismatched, an odd couple divided by age, temperament and philosophy. Penny embodies corporate compliance. She has internalised the company’s expectations so completely they seem to govern her every action. She has never taken a day off, faithfully performs the recommended workplace exercises during her breaks and refuses to take personal calls on company time. For Penny, survival depends on obedience.
Flux, by contrast, views employment as transactional, a means to an end. They are unafraid to take a mental health day and openly question procedures Penny accepts without hesitation. Their early exchanges crackle with tension, shaped by suspicion and incomprehension and the differences that seem to define them.
A sterile environment
The set (from Jacob Battista) reinforces this emotional and ideological divide. The action unfolds almost entirely within a stark white room bathed in fluorescent overhead light (lighting by Harrie Hogan), a space hovering ambiguously between factory floor and science laboratory.
It is clinical, anonymous and faintly menacing.
In this sterile environment, Penny is aghast to learn Flux did not complete the online training modules before their official start date. Flux, perplexed, asks why they would work before being paid. This small but telling disagreement encapsulates the broader philosophical gulf between them.
Tong allows the narrative to unfold at a deliberate, contemplative pace. Katy Maudlin’s direction is considered and deft. Time stretches and folds in on itself; days and months blur together in the purgatory of workplace monotony. Boxes arrive through a mysterious “box door”. Penny and Flux methodically open, catalogue and repack their contents. Pool floaties are inflated and deflated. Ribbons are measured and cut. Plastic fir tree Christmas ornaments are checked and counted.
There is no rationale or meaning to this work. As the play progresses, the boxes accumulate, slowly encroaching upon the white space. The endless stocktake becomes both a literal task and metaphor for existential stasis and ultimately reveal how difficult the rhythm of the workplace can be to resist.
Building a friendship
Initially their exchanges are stilted; Penny’s clipped, interrogative responses set against Flux’s fluid, stream-of-consciousness reflections. But the dialogue gradually softens. Each begins to absorb something of the other.
Flux helps Penny navigate her teenage daughter’s climate anxiety, gently introducing language and empathy where Penny once defaulted to confusion. In turn, Penny becomes an almost maternal figure to Flux, offering reassurance, steadiness and concern beneath her rigid exterior, specifically in relation to Flux obtaining a credit card to support their desire for costly gender affirmation surgery.
Although Penny is confused about Flux’s desire to change their body, Penny’s concern is more about Flux finding themselves in a difficult financial position. Penny and Flux’s bond becomes an act of quiet rebellion against the isolating logic of the institution.
The unseen corporate overlords loom throughout. A performance review instructs Flux to increase their productivity. At one point, a cake arrives unannounced through the box door. Penny reacts with alarm: cake preceded the last wave of redundancies, and so she promptly throws it in the bin, despite Flux’s delight. The gesture captures the atmosphere of paranoia cultivated by opaque management practices.
Beneath the humour lies a deeper inquiry into institutional oppression. As Flux encourages Penny to pursue an ADHD diagnosis, the play probes the tension between social and medical models of disability. Penny muses her suburb reportedly has a high proportion of neurodiverse residents. Is the environment producing neurodivergence, she wonders, or do neurodivergent people gravitate there because it offers belonging? The question lingers, unresolved. Flux convinces Penny to ask for workplace adjustments; Penny is unsurprised when management denies her requests.
In a powerful scene toward the end of the play, Flux offers a monologue: a compelling metaphor on difference, desire and longing, deciding not to go ahead with their surgery… yet.
The moment marks a shift in the sterile surrounds. The characters move outside of the tight confines of their workplace and a warm orange glow envelopes them. Their shared humanity – the messiness, chaos, care and connection troubling the corporate machine – is highlighted.
Do Not Pass Go is a quietly devastating meditation on labour, conformity and the fragile human connections persisting, despite them.
No easy solution is offered. Instead, the suggestion is resistance may begin in smaller, subtler acts: questioning a rule, taking a longer break, making an offer of solidarity or care to a work colleague, choosing compassion over compliance. In doing so, the play honours Kafka’s legacy while speaking urgently to the anxieties of the modern workplace.
Do Not Pass Go is at Melbourne Theatre Company until March 28.
Authors: Sarah Austin, Senior Lecturer in Theatre, The University of Melbourne
Read more https://theconversation.com/jean-tongs-do-not-pass-go-is-kafka-for-the-modern-corporate-age-274979
