As Lara runs from kitchen to table and back again, Constance conveys the ever more frantic atmosphere in a restaurant beset by the challenges of too many Christmas parties, entitled customers, stupid jokes and endless complaints. Lara even begins to enjoy herself; customers, good and bad, inspire her writing, and Amara is flourishing too. The Head Chef showers her with gratitude and prosecco.<\/p>\n
Lara thinks she has everything under control, but Constance drip feeds us little nuggets that show us how innocent her heroine really is. Lara doesn\u2019t question the chef\u2019s motives any more than Amara questions her Headmaster\u2019s; both of them look to men for validation. Lara lives in a fictional fantasy world, where happy endings are there for the taking \u2013 if men are good enough to hand them over.<\/p>\n
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When Lara\u2019s promoted to the management team she\u2019s pleased \u2013 until she finds out just what that entails; more rushing from pillar to post, more fielding of complaints, overrunning shifts, now all served with the added seasoning of staff problems, and for a generous pay rise of 19p per hour. Her writing is suffering, she\u2019s too exhausted to think about it; instead she goes to bed with a head full of misplaced orders and mismanaged tables.<\/p>\n
And then something happens, something that shocks Lara to the core and sends her confidence into freefall. Lara tries to get it out of her system and into her novel, but that doesn\u2019t help; Amara\u2019s as lost as her creator. Abuse of power and gaslighting are both explored as Lara blames herself to excuse behaviour that has no excuse, but still so often finds one.<\/p>\n
Lara\u2019s eventual escape from her torment comes through the much greater suffering of another woman. It\u2019s to Constance\u2019s credit that she makes sure her character realises that most people in service jobs are far more \u2018stuck\u2019 than she is; for them the work isn\u2019t a stopgap, and no matter what it throws at them they have little choice but to suck it up.<\/p>\n
The resolution of Lara\u2019s story did, however, seem to me a little too easy, calling to mind the ending of so many chick lit novels in which the heroine inevitably ends up with a lovely little life. The difference here is that Lara\u2019s love life hardly features at all; she makes frequent references to her boyfriend Ash, but we know nothing about him, and I began to wonder why he featured at all. \u00a0Some development of his character, if only as he affects Lara\u2019s life, would have added interest, alternatively he could have been axed to sharpen the focus on Lara herself. When she leaves the restaurant, Lara tells us that Ash is \u2018proud of her\u2019; should this have mattered?<\/p>\n
Service Please does perhaps place a little too much reliance on the one swear word; I have no objection to it, and one only has to watch any fly-on-the-kitchen-restaurant-wall documentary to know how frequently it\u2019s screamed across the counters, but a bit of variety in the oaths department would have been welcome.<\/p>\n
A show at 9.55 in the morning is not an easy thing to pull off, especially when Edinburgh\u2019s weather has taken a turn for the worse. Audiences are neither warmed up by the sun nor other shows, nor are they fuelled by a good lunch or a few beers. Despite this, Constance keeps the audience\u2019s attention throughout, and really brings home to us the challenging drudgery of restaurant work, an aspect of modern life rarely addressed in theatre. <\/p>\n
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There\u2019s also a lot of humour in a play that could otherwise have turned into a relentless serving of woe; I particularly enjoyed Lara\u2019s description of middle-class parents encouraging their offspring to take their time to recite the entire table\u2019s orders while the infuriated waiting staff stand smiling through gritted teeth. I bet this scene has been played out in every eatery across the city this month. Parents who assume everyone will find their children every bit as enchanting as they do really do deserve spittle in their soup.<\/p>\n
Service Please, written, directed and performed by Constance Peel, is at the Stephenson Theatre at theSpace@ Surgeons\u2019 Hall, Nicolson Street (venue 53) at 9.55am every day until 23 August. Tickets here<\/a>.<\/p>\n