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written and directed by Morris Panych

Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

November 15-December 18, 2005

The first thing you see when you enter the Tarragon Mainspace is Ken MacDonald’s extravagantly detailed, exuberantly grimy basement workspace where the dishwashers of Morris Panych’s invigorating new play work away their lives.  As usual Panych doesn’t so much tell a story as create a situation.  Here the situation involves three characters--Dressler (Randy Hughson), the domineering dishwashing captain; Moss (Eric Peterson), his decrepit co-worker who carries portable oxygen for his one good lung; and Emmett (Jonathan Crombie), the “New Guy,” who once was rich enough to dine in the swanky restaurant above where now, having lost everything, he washes dishes.  Two questions draw us in-- “Will Emmett last in this job?” and “Will Moss last, period?” 

Hughson’s superbly controlled performance pitches Dressler’s enthusiasm for his work halfway between manic obsession and legitimate pride in a job well done no matter how lowly.  Peterson is hilarious in the farcical-but-tragic mode of Beckett’s tramps.  Crombie, the only character who changes, moves believably from defeatism and amazement at Dressler’s unshakable attitude to feeling himself drawn in by Dressler’s heroic but frightening vision that has no room for change.  Ironically, our ridicule of Dressler’s defense of “junk jobs,” only implicates the unquestioned unshakability of our own sources of self-esteem.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-01-24.

Photo: Randy Hughson, Eric Peterson and Jonathan Crombie. ©2005 Cylla von Tiedemann.