Like a tongue-in-cheek Tony Robbins seminar, James Schloeffel and Charles Firth brought the latest iteration of their workplace comedy Wankernomics Show_v4.1_Final_USETHIS to a packed tent in Gluttony.

With enough corporate jargon and tech frustration humour to trigger anyone working in an office environment, it also provided biting satire on the working world many of us are living in daily.

Starting with a corp-speak montage video that makes you really question why we use the word “socialise” when we we’re talking about sending a Powerpoint deck, circling back and having documents back by the “end of play”. Schloeffel and Firth’s incisive wit had the crowd collectively groaning in recognition of the ridiculous way many of us have adapted our language in today’s office.

The show doubles as a dodgy sales pitch, where the audience collectively wince-laughed when they realised they had been duped into the basic version of the show and need to upgrade to a Premium Pro Plus version to get all the bells and whistles. A marketing and sales ploy all too familiar in the world of subscription-based platforms.

Both performers lean into the mock-academic format with fervour. Charts, graphs and pseudo-scientific theories are deployed with increasing ridiculousness. They dismantle the hollow language of hustle culture and poke fun at “thought leaders”. The writing is tight, clever and often punishingly accurate.

Both Schloeffer and Firth remain committed to the bit throughout, maintaining a perfect deadpan even as the material veers into the absurd, and their chemistry keeps the pace quick.

Wankernomics isn’t just taking shots though, it articulated the exhaustion of living in a world where everything is branded, optimised, monetised, or turned into LinkedIn content. Both performers never lost sight of the human frustration at the centre of the joke.

Wankernomics is smart, brutally funny and relatable for anyone who’s ever sat through a corporate workshop or screamed at their computer during a password reset (or captcha).

See Wankernomics Show v4.1_Final_USETHIS in The Flamingo tent at Gluttony until Sunday, March 22. Get your tickets here.

**** Four stars