The Dishwashers

Of all our contemporary urban myths none is more absurd than the fiction of the “classless society,” and Morris Panych’s latest comedy penetrates ruthlessly to the shock and horror of the residue of hardened pesto soiling its porcelain heart.

Haplessly determined to have his own miserable authority vindicated, chief dishwasher Dressler presides over the steam-choked basement of an up-scale restaurant, a place of seamless existential drudgery so utterly remote from the light of day that its wage-slaves have no contact with anyone outside. Spouting an indiscriminate cornucopia of working-class ethic, an interminable babble of pride of craft, Marxist rhetoric and the virtues of individual entrepreneurship as celebrated by Ayn Rand, Dressler tyrannizes his co-workers relentlessly.

Unfortunately, both the “old hand” Moss and the “new guy” Emmett fail utterly to see things his way as they stubbornly and inexplicably pursue both their rejection of and aspiration to join “the folks upstairs.”

AUTHOR

Morris Panych

Playwright, actor and director Morris Panych has been described as “a man for all seasons in Canadian theatre.” He has appeared in over fifty theatre productions and in numerous television and film roles. He has directed more than ninety theatre productions and written over a dozen plays that have been translated and produced throughout the world. He has twice won the Governor General’s Award and has won the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award fourteen times for acting and directing. He has also been nominated six times for Toronto’s Dora Mavor Moore Award and three times for the Chalmers Award. The 2009 Off-Broadway production of his play Vigil opened to rave reviews. Under the title Auntie & Me, Vigil was also produced in London in 2003–04; and in French at Théâtre La Bruyère in Paris in 2005; and his classic 7 Stories ranks 9th among the ten best selling plays in Canada, outselling the Coles version of Romeo & Juliet. For more information on the work and career of Morris Panych, visit his website.

Reviews

“Morris Panych’s dark comedy The Dishwashers is reminiscent of a Samuel Beckett work, complete with existential philosophizing and dialogue that prompts wince-inducing laughter.”
— Patrick Lee, Theatermania

“This microcosm of society at large is a brilliant and fascinating portrait of class as it exists at every level, even the relatively invisible.” — Curled up with a Good Book

“A big existential present lovingly packaged in grease and suds … An anti-holiday antidote for those who take their humour black.”
— Hour

“A brilliant extended metaphor for the way our society works. The dialogue is by turns quizzical, snide, sarcastic, defiant and servilely accommodating.”
— Bloomberg News

“The philosophical banter is original and fun. It brims with ideas that might nestle down well with the writing of Pinter, Beckett or Orwell.”
– BBC Shropshire