Jobsworth is billed as a riotous comedy a couple of lady, Bea, juggling a number of jobs, some overlapping with others. A purse canine that she is paid to take care of finally ends up being smuggled into her workplace drawer most mornings. This black comedy presents the monetary lure she is in and it’s carried out by Libby Rodliffe with caffeinated pace and nice verbal dexterity. However beneath the vitality is a tragedy ready to occur, it appears, simply inches away from Bea’s bionic hustling (“All that is high quality, principally high quality,” she says, tightly).
Bea is a private assistant, knowledge inputter and overseer of luxurious flats in addition to a dog-sitter. Rodliffe, who wrote the monologue with Isley Lynn, performs each character, from Bea’s depressed father whose money owed she takes on to a mom who she feels has left her within the lurch financially, alongside varied venal and demanding employers.
Every of them has a definite and characterful voice. The language of the workplace is brilliantly skewered in Rodliffe’s enactment of Zoom conferences and office protocols, from the free lunches each Tuesday (the place Bea pilfers meals provides) to the “match temp” and Steve from IT who “doesn’t like his son’s girlfriend as a result of she desires the subsequent James Bond to be a girl”.
Directed by Nicky Allpress, the present has an enormous however contained power in its navigation of a number of components, together with Bea’s simmering romance with an intern, however by no means turns into chaotic. The subject material is predicated in real-life tales, but the play rigorously maintains the rule of exhibiting not telling in its presentation of economic disaster, the abuses of the zero-hours financial system and its soul-sapping impact on the psyche.
There isn’t any decision and Bea remains to be plate-spinning by the top, however a second of pause brings heat and likewise tears for her fortitude. If Bea refuses to be damaged by the complexities of her life, Rodliffe does a formidable juggling act of her personal in a stupendous efficiency.
