About the Play:

The Dishwashers is a full-length comedy by Morris Panych. In the steamy bowels of an upscale restaurant, two dishwashers from different social castes and with different philosophies, debate the meaning of their work.

The Dishwashers is a penetrating story about the people who clean up after us all. 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. Of all our contemporary urban myths none is more absurd than the fiction of the classless society, and Morris Panych's comedy penetrates ruthlessly to the shock and horror of the residue of hardened pesto soiling its porcelain heart.

The Dishwashers premiered in 2005 at the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver. It opened Off-Broadway in 2009 at 59E59 Theaters.

Cast: 4 men

What people say:

"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

About the Playwright:

Morris Panych is one of Canada's most significant contemporary playwrights. He has written more than 25 works for the stage and directed nearly 100. He is the winner of two Governor General's Literary Awards for Drama, the country's most prestigious literary honour. He has won 14 Jessie Richardson Awards, three Sidney Riske Writing Awards and five Dora Mavor Moore Awards.