You won’t look at your neighbourhood cafe or its workers in quite the same way after watching “Performance Review,” Rosamund Small’s intimate, insightful solo show about surviving a series of bad jobs and living to tell the tales.
“Bad jobs” might feel like an exaggeration. On the surface, most of the gigs Small recounts are fine, and some, like working at a prestigious Toronto theatre company or on an American TV show, even seem glamorous. But they’re full of unequal power dynamics and some quiet examples of abuse that will jolt your nervous system as much as a triple espresso.
By the way, before the show begins you can order that espresso, and other drinks and treats, at the play’s site-specific venue, Morning Parade Coffee Bar, located across from Trinity Bellwoods Park.
The cosy setting — with a capacity of just over 30 — is appropriate, because Small’s first story chronicles her time working at a Second Cup cafe. Taking the proverbial “year off to find herself,” Small’s wide-eyed, unnamed 18-year-old protagonist enjoys connecting with the store’s regulars — including a mysterious male customer who only wants her to serve him and leaves bigger and bigger tips after each visit.
What begins as a potentially lucrative way to delay attending university soon becomes intertwined with microaggressions from her co-workers and boss. And since Small’s character already exudes a lack of self-confidence, the whimsical, capricious nature of her wealthy patron indirectly makes her question her worth — all of which becomes more complicated when the store closes.
Over the next hour, still wearing her cafe worker apron — as if to reinforce her permanent server status — Small takes us through moments from five more jobs over a dozen or so years, each sequence separated by a blackout and humming from Heidi Chan’s sound design to help us process what came before.
One of these jobs involves being a playwright-in-training for a gregarious, charismatic artistic director of a theatre company who is expert at networking but kind of handsy (he’ll soon be accused of sexual harassment). Another involves starting up a progressive, non-hierarchical theatre company that, when the lights go down, proves to be hierarchical in another way.
It’s not just men who are at fault in these stories. A female TV showrunner in an early sequence pits employee against employee. And in a particularly devastating scene, a woman who obviously knows a theatre director is a serial abuser talks around the issue with Small’s character.
Because of the play’s structure, we don’t get to spend very much time with the play’s secondary characters before we move onto others, but the author, guided by Mitchell Cushman, Outside the March founding artistic director, paints them with such exquisite detail that they pop.
Small, who won a Dora Award for the immersive and interactive play “Vitals,” also includes motifs that lend the play momentum and a sense of unity. In times of extreme duress, her protagonist breaks down and contemplates self-harm: she thinks about shattering a glass and eating the shards, for instance, or what it would be like to swallow a marble whole.
Some additional details about her life, however, or the recurring presence of a best friend or family member, might add more texture to this character’s world. And while the writing is skilful, a more experienced actor (this is Small’s debut performance) could add needed nuance.
Still, as with many Outside the March productions, much of the play’s power comes from its setting (Anahita Dehbonehie is production designer). Thanks to unobtrusive lights and props placed throughout the space — which is still being used as a cafe during the day — certain moments hum with theatricality.
During one scene, two overhead lights capture Small, her vulnerable body on the cafe’s counter, as she struggles against an intruder. In a contrasting comic moment, Small’s character rushes to a train and she flicks a switch on an espresso maker to mimic the sound of an old-fashioned engine.
“Performance Review,” which sold out its run but added more performances, is the first show in Outside the March’s 15th-anniversary season.
The company has adopted a “pop-up” model of community partnership that, thanks to portable tech elements, will use the city as its stage.
Can’t wait to see what they brew next.
