10 Feet Tall, Cardiff
Sun 28 Aug
★★★☆☆
The revolt has begun. They – the dead wood, the excess baggage – are our parents, our mentors and our rivals. We – the young, the poor – are the wolf at the door, working for free or not at all. They are the people who told us all to go to university to study ‘what we love’, but won’t step aside now their time is up. The people who hopelessly fumble around in the age of new media, considering getting a MySpace, writing texts that read like a Prince tracklisting and putting LOL at the end of every message because they think it means ‘lots of love’. The old guard who want stability in an age of change, who want newspapers in an age of online media, who want Pop Tarts in an age of Dairylea Dunkers. We – well, we’re barely even the same species. We are huge in Japan and we have never even left our bedrooms.
Can I Have A Job Please? is a play as much about this pronounced generational divide as it is about joblessness. It’s an emotional, bitterly satirical piece from a pair of exceptionally good young writers sick of being marginalised. It explores the spectrum of emotions awaiting graduates who should have their whole lives ahead of them, but instead struggle to get jobs. Relayed through a series of sketches that play on the theme of joblessness, it shifts from the satirical to the surreal, reflecting variously the insecurity, neediness, anger and frustration of the jobless graduate.
The best of these scenes explore the all-consuming nature of the job hunt. A lovely opening vignette takes a look at the mind-numbing process of sifting through applications. Insecurity is explored in a different way in a poignant, funny scene that looks at what would happen if you had to apply for a relationship.
A couple of scenes feel a touch hackneyed. The tirade from a frustrated service industry worker trapped in a monotonous job and having to maintain an amiable social veneer for a bunch of legless customers is a cliché that this play could have done without – even though it was powerful enough to spark a small cheer from the audience.
Structurally, it’s a series of variations on a theme rather than a clearly defined, progressive narrative. But there is more than enough sharp writing and inventive staging to make Can I Have A Job Please? an entertaining, fresh and relevant piece. This is the first play from writer-directors Natalie Stone and Anna Poole, who are young, very talented and deserving of wider support. Somebody throw them an internship, at the very least.
