Dishwashers in Richmond and the Wholefoods Market there.

Having yesterday seen the touring production of The  Dishwashers by the Canadian writer Morris Panych I would say that it has much to recommend it.

The themes in the play  covered are major ones but it is achieved with a lightness of  touch and warm

humour, avoiding to a large degree simple cliché and leaving the  audience thinking about there own lives which is to my mind  no easy goal.

The play is set in a single setting the home of the working 'Dishwashers' of the title and celebrates the near Zen like existence of the workers who wash dishes in a swanky restaurant their discussions and conflicts  reflect without pretentiousness what happens in the wider society.

The staging of the drama was naturalistic and the acting top rate, it was a 'tour de force' by the three main actors David Essex, Rik Makeram and  Andrew Jarvis.

The play was for me a philosophical one  with Essex  a seemingly stoic figure, a Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill regardless of the unending pile of dirty plates emerging from the dumb waiter.

It was interesting to see David Essex holding the audience so capably ,  there was still something of  the 1970s  pop singer  I recall from my youth but now he is very much the actor, with timing and stagecraft gleaned from stage and TV performing Essex was the initial London Che in Evita and had a lead role in the successful Eastenders TV Soap opera.

Here's a review from when the production was in Birmingham.
and here's a sort of 'taster' from David's YouTube channel

Richmond Wholefoods Market

If you're in Richmond do pay a visit to the new-ish Richmond  Wholefoods Market, it's probably outrageously overpriced but it has helpful staff, nice ambiance and makes food shopping kind of fun.

New wholefood in Richmond