|
|
|
|
|
Old hands that do dishes
Washed up: Rik Makarem (Emmett) faces up to David Essex (Dressler) and Andrew Jarvis (Moss) The Dishwashers Birmingham Rep ** THIS must be the ultimate kitchen sink
drama set, as it is, in the dingy cellar of a top London restaurant
where a trio of misfits are up to their elbows in soapy water, with
hands nowhere near as soft as their face, washing an endless mountain of
crockery and cutlery. David Essex is Dressler, king of all he surveys, which admittedly is not much, just a couple of sinks, a bin of slops and a pile of spuds. He is the head dishwasher with a management so
appreciative and in awe of him that he is anonymous - the weekly time
sheets still have the names of long departed staff. Dressler or the new
boy don’t even have their own name as far as upstairs is concerned and
having a name is important to Dressler. It shows you have respect, shows
you are a dishwasher. Dressler is a humourless bully with a line of philosophy that could have come from those funny little pars at the bottom of Reader’s Digest articles and he had a morality all of his own. He is for what he sees as right at one end with fear and subservience to management at the other. Essex is rather sinister in the role, not with a
threat of violence, but with verbal bullying in what was a very measured
performance. It was impossible to Sadly either the sound needed tweaking or it took
a while to become attuned to his voice but it was difficult to hear
Essex clearly for the opening half of the first act, a problem which was
happily resolved.
Assisting Dressler, slowly, is Moss, a sort of
Del Boy’s Uncle Albert down on both his luck and working brain cells
played beautifully by RSC actor Andrew Jarvis. Moss is ancient, on the
brink of senility and dishwashing, or at least a place to go, a place
where he has human contact, is his whole life. He is long past it, hardly able to pull himself along let alone pull his weight, but no one has the heart to tell him, even when he is replaced. Dressler's strange morality sees him paying the
Into their comfortable world, comfortable being
relative of course, comes Emmett, the new boy, and a fine performance
from Rik Makarem. Emmett is a City high flier, a dealer making and
spending a fortune in the hedonistic world of high finance, or rather he
was until the crash and his loss of millions was discovered. His waterside apartment has gone, he is living in
a room with no window, his relationship with his girlfriend, who has no
idea about his new job, is rocky and he sees a come down to being a
dishwasher as a last resort to keep body and soul together – and that is
where the real friction comes from. To Emmett dishwasher in a restaurant where he
once regularly dined is pretty well rock bottom, a necessity until he
can get back on his feet, somewhere to bounce back from not something to
embrace with any sort of future. To Dressler there is a huge difference between
washing dishes and being a dishwasher, a transition requiring a right of
passage, a pinnacle of achievement. Dressler sees having low aspirations
as making it easier to achieve all you want in life and being a
dishwasher brings him great satisfaction; seeing the gleaming plates and
silverware on tables as he enters the restaurant is all he has persuaded
himself he wants in life. Whether he believes that or resents it we never
really discover but he does tell us, reassuringly, "As you get older
your dreams get smaller". In truth though we know no more about
Dressler at the end than we did within five minutes of first meeting
him. He is a cantankerous tyrant and you are never sure if what he says
is truth or lies even when he admits what he has said is untrue.
That brings in new boy Burroughs, played by Jared
Garfield, another who sees dishwashing as a job rather than a career,
which brings the same friction, the same lecture and the same sermon
from Dressler.
There is one final encounter between Dressler and
the newly enriched Emmett, who is back on his well-heeled feet and whose
wedding reception is being held upstairs in the restaurant. Emmett realises that having put dishwashing
behind him and gone back to his old hedonistic ways he has lost
something from his life and tries to tell Dressler. But from Dressler
there is just contempt. Not at his return to wealth, not at his
returning as a customer, but because in his two years in the dingy
cellar in Dressler’s exacting world, he never become in Dressler’s eyes
the thing he should have aspired to, a dishwasher. This new Rep production of Morris Panych's Broadway play of 2009 has been reworked for British audiences by Panych. As a play is is hardly uplifting and in many ways appears superficial with it difficult to find any real empathy with any character, we care little more for them when we leave than we did when we entered which may be the point. Theirs is a world we don't see and are never likely to see, which is probably how Dressler likes it. As a play it seems unsure about whether it is a
bleak comedy or just bleak and there are quite a few laughs hidden amid
the grease and grime with my favourite: Dressler: I was nothing but a prisoner when I
came here. Emmett: In what sense? Dressler: In Her Majesty’s sense. Matthew Wright’s scruffy, grubby, run down set,
exuding grease and slops, complete with steam pipes and with working
taps and real washing up, adds to the sense of depression but director
Nikolai Foster manages a decent rhythm, not always easy in a one set
production where life is numbingly boring and not a lot happens, to
produce a thoughtful, well paced play, even if you do leave thanking
your lucky stars for a dishwasher you switch on rather than argue with.
Oh, and it is worth remembering the advice from Moss to never to enter a
raffle in a chemists’ shop. To 15-02-14. Roger Clarke
|
|
|
|
warm to his Dressler or even like him. He was someone you could never
take to and someone perhaps too close to home for many people who have
suffered similar petty bullies in their own workplace.