Roy Crosland
posted 3 May 2005

Life coaching is one of the many new-age activities that have crept into everyday life in the past few years, provoking contempt and delight in equal proportions. Most people have an opinion on the subject but Will Adamsdale has developed an entire stand-up routine on it.

His one man show is a hilarious spoof of a life coach attempting to drum up business for his workshops. Will plays the eponymous anti-hero Chris John Jackson. Using a combination of spoof evangelicanism and salesmanship, he takes the audience (his cadets) through the basic concepts of his 'way'. Although his philosophy is based around the pursuit of pointless things, by the end of the evening I was sorely tempted to enrol!

Jackson is well versed in the vernacular style of the life coach; he uses a dazzling mixture of patronising behaviour and three letter acronyms to lend potency to his pointless activities. He even uses a PowerPoint presentation as both a prop and a backdrop. Jackson's delivery is original and very engaging - within a few minutes he wins over the audience, who are by now raising clenched fists in unison, while chanting the Jackson mantra: 'achieved'. 'Acheived' is chanted whenever he, or a member of the audience, has successfully (or not) completed a totally pointless activity. The outcome is irrelevant; simply chanting the word gave you a sense of accomplishment. His format, although ridiculous to the extreme, will be painfully familiar to those who have had to endure an 'awareness' or team building course in their daily activities. Jackson leaves no stone unturned and shows no mercy. Throughout the course of the evening every aspect of life coaching is subjected to ridicule; this is made all the funnier by the fact that Jackson is such a believable character.

Whether consciously or not, Adamsdale seems to be parodying more than just the curious notion of life coaching. Rather, he seems to lampoon the notion of self-esteem and the broader notions of therapy culture. Self-esteem is another new-age idea that has taken root in modern day society. Jackson makes great play of the fact that success or failure make no difference whatsoever: as long as you feel good about it, that's all that counts. And in his mock condescension and false praise to his cadets he has captured the attitude of those who would champion therapy culture.

He has constructed a living, breathing character that is almost believable in spite its ludicrous premise. His spiel is peppered with amusing anecdotes from his previous courses and comments from former pupils (some of whom reached level nine on the Jackson scale!). To succesfully take on a subject like this requires a reasonable amount of skill and originality - and Will Adamsdale has both. The laughs wear a little thin toward the end of the show but by this point the audience has had more than its money's worth. Curiously enough, as the audience leaves we are played out to the strains of the beautiful adagietto movement from Mahler's fifth symphony. I couldn't quite see the point in that. 'Achieved'.

Till 6 May 2005