Review: WORK BITCH, VAULT Festival

Waitress is 32 years old and is still serving tables. She didn't plan out to stay in the service for this long, nor she enjoys the humiliation and stress it comes from it. Yet, she does it day after day, greeting customers and dealing with their every impossible request.

Jessica Siân runs her audience through 17 years in the hospitality business. She describes how Waitress got into it in the first place and how she went from "learning the value of money" while she was still in school to being trapped in the industry.

Siân's script sees her painting the people around her, colleagues and friends, quickly switching between accents and flares. A demure attitude and pleasant manners hide a deep sadness that the character can't shake nor show publicly.

Directed by Blythe Stewart, she stands in front of endless orders organised quite messily on the racks. Siân is subtly funny, finding humour in the tragic happenings in every server's work-life.

Through rude and demanding patrons and harsh managers she shows the hardships and cruelty of the industry, essentially making Work Bitch mandatory viewing for anyone at the other end of customer service.

She also reveals the bonds and internal support (or lack thereof) that are born out of survival among staff members, detailing how long shifts and late nights can be as isolating as they can secure that feeling of closeness within each other.

The strength of the piece lies in Siân's tragicomic spin on a life she sees as wasted on a job that's not guaranteeing her a future.

Work Bitch runs at VAULT Festival until 3 March.

To post a comment, you must register and login.