The Dishwashers

It’s not easy to start a review of Morris Panych’s play. It’s delivered with style, looks like a serious work and is played by a strong cast. David Essex gives an assured performance as shop floor philosopher Dressler, Rik Makarem is equally confident as fallen city slicker Emmett and Andrew Jarvis is extraordinary as Moss. The problem is that despite all this, it has the feel of a sit-com, a very long sitcom. Not that that is bad, there are some excellent gags – “Why did he choose to have an enema?” “He did’t, he won it in a raffle” one of the funniest I have heard in any play. The problem is that the work seems to waver between serious allegory and comedy – whilst never quite finding that key blackness or sense of the absurd. It was like watching an episode of a classic Galton and Simpson comedy ghosted by Beckett or Pinter even, odd to say the least.

Theatre Royal Brighton
24 March 2014

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