FAST FOOD by Morgan Rose: A critical response by Jean Tong
June has been a busy period in Melbourne theatre. With the return of so many productions, and so much disruption brought about by covid, getting review space in regular publications has been a little harder than usual. So, we’ve decided to publish a couple of peer reviews from theatre critics and practitioners that wouldn’t otherwise be seen. Here’s a response to Morgan Rose’s Fast Food from director and writer, Jean Tong.
You Are Not Quite Human at This Point in Your Life
Morgan, what do you want me to write about your play? is what I should have asked when we last bumped into each other after a show. It was a theatre premiere in Melbourne, and I was studiously avoiding making unnecessary eye contact with anyone so I wouldn’t have to have an anxiety-inducing conversation about the show.
Swaying from the free bubbly, instead of asking Morgan any useful questions, we talked about how good it felt to not work for a bit.
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“Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Tell me when to work and eat and have children and sleep and fall in love and go to the toilet and shower and watch television and you can even kill me if you want.”
Chi Nguyen & Ella Caldwell in Fast Food rehearsal. Photos taken by Darcy Kent.
In the first movement of Fast Food, Morgan weaves together micro-desires, micro-management, and micro-aggressions, highlighting the tiny power plays between people of different histories brought together around the soulless steel kitchen bench of a fast food chain.
Manager TROY (Kevin Hofbauer) marches through the space, untouchable, authoritarian. 17-year-old Assistant Manager RIVER (Chi Nguyen) clings to his coattails, desperate to be liked, and willing to throw everyone, including nurse-to-be LEONARD (Casey Filips) under the bus. Meanwhile the Sims-addicted, aimless G (Isha Menon) lets rip with unabashed sarcasm, over it before the shift has barely started. Their stilted, habitual banter is interrupted by the late, unexpected arrival of ROSEMARY (Ella Caldwell), a recent divorcee with a bad habit of calling River ‘hun’ and ‘love’, much to the latter’s ire.
As the staff move through their mundane tasks, the mechanics begin to play second fiddle to their escapist tendencies. Breaking the fourth-wall, the characters pull themselves away from their jobs—dry mopping, cleaning the grill, refilling sauce containers—to express the secret tendencies they harbour.
Leonard’s imagination takes him to the beach and a luxurious beachside home; Troy immerses himself in a dystopian nightmare in which he is a hero – finally, people want his help, instead of despising him for being a manager. G, meanwhile, finds ease in making big life decisions in the Sims™, replete with stand-ins for her workmates. River agonises over every word she says while being confronted by flights of sexual fantasy. And Rosemary, battling feelings of inadequacy and bitterness amidst fresh-faced youngsters, retreats to the comfort of childhood with an imaginary My Little Pony best friend.
Ella Caldwell, Casey Filips, Kevin Hofbauer and Chi Nguyen.
Sitting in this clash between perpetual motion and wishful thinking, I am struck by how Fast Food captures the sickly feeling of how assembly-line labour dehumanises people, reducing them to a series of employable actions distinct from their actual sense of self. There’s a distinct gesture towards this separation of mind from body: as their hands and feet move to the demands of the monitor above screening burger order after burger order, their minds wander free, exulting in human imagination.
This point is jammed home as Leonard, racing towards a moment of self-actualisation, is abruptly interrupted by Rosemary’s prosaic burger-building question. Filips satisfyingly flips (sorry), turning his full attention to Rosemary, soul crushed for good.
“If I’m in charge I don’t want it. I don’t want it. I just want everyone to help do the things that need to be done. I definitely don’t want to be king. If you want to be king, then take it.”
As the workplace tension grows, the slippages between reality and fantasy increase. Troy and Leonard’s fantasies bleed together, landing them both in a world where the water is rising and sometimes you can’t save everyone. Leonard is shocked to realise that his peaceful beach-house is under attack in Troy’s dystopian world. As the boundaries between their fantasies coalesce, all five quit their job and go to the beach where they live happily ever after, free of the 9-to-5. Mostly.
Director Bridget Balodis and Ella Caldwell.
Between the sharing of cleaning duties and foraging for food, they sit around telling stories. A tale unfolds of a Dickensian orphan boy working his way up a factory to become successful, and when faced with weakness in the form of a baby bird, chooses to destroy it. The group accepts this Grimm fairytale unquestioningly – it feels bleak, definitive, a warning and a reminder of what they’ve left behind.
But despite their best efforts at living with no hierarchy, it demands to be re-established. When the food and wood runs out, the group is faced with the reality that their idealised world still requires someone somewhere to do the cleaning, fetching wood, killing of animals for sustenance. Fast Food deftly reminds us that under capitalism, someone somewhere has to get their hands bloody.
Even in this beatific beach fantasy, there is no escape.
“you are not quite human at this point in your life, you are a successful businessman machine who overcame”
As fond reminiscence leads to the group roleplaying being back in the assembly line, we’re slowly led back around the steel kitchen bench. The pace of the piece shifts abruptly when River has an accident and loses two fingers in the commercial kitchen slicer. As Troy overcomes his ‘blood thing’ to drive her to the hospital, Rosemary recalls River’s plan to audition for a music conservatory – on piano. There’s a heaviness to this scene, a starkness to the sudden loss, the point about temporary jobs leaving permanent fingerprints clear as day.
The play ends shortly after. There are no more fantasies, no more asides to the audience. Just a couple of people left trying to hold the pieces together.
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Watching Fast Food was like sitting through a time capsule of the past two years. The rhythm underpinning the three broad movements in the piece reminded me of the rhythm of the discourse bubbling up throughout the pandemic about work and the value of human life. Everyday rhythm was disrupted, forcing many to question their career and lifestyle as essential work (and the associated minimum-or-less wage) began to be rethought. Income support increased, for many a literal life-changer.
Chi Nguyen, Ella Caldwell, Casey Filips and Kevin Hofbauer.
The idea of a universal basic income crept in from the fringes, and mainstream thought attended to this idea like a delicate flower, fragrant rather than poisonous.
And then we went back.
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Fast Food doesn’t offer false hope. Morgan, in the writer’s notes, tells us that “the play took a turn towards something darker. I couldn’t stop it from happening, I guess I didn’t really try.”
How do you fight a system when you have to precisely put down two pickles on a patty, 500 to 1000 times a day?
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But if the play inevitably mirrors the darkness of capitalism, it also mirrors the lightness of human connection.
I was moved by Rosemary, who was the only person working to provide for someone other than herself. I was touched by Leonard trying to protect Rosemary from being hazed. I empathised with River’s awkward attempts to connect by bringing her co-workers biscuits they hated. I laughed at G’s ineffective cruelty as she excised her frustrations in a virtual world. I relished in Troy’s self-hating diatribe about the corrupt value of fast food franchises.
Above corporate value lies human value. At the point of River’s workplace accident, real feeling spills through. It’s the only time we’re outside fantasy that everyone’s walls come down. Their vulnerable, prickly exteriors set aside in the face of disaster in favour of caring for one another. It’s an artful reminder of the indefatigable humanity we share amidst the wreckage of a vast, broken system.
A reminder, and perhaps a warning, of the cost of only rethinking work when faced with life-changing disasters.
This piece was commissioned by Red Stitch Actor’s Theatre, and premiered in Melbourne, May, 2022.