REVIEW: THE WORK WE DO by Cerys Jones at White Bear Theatre 30 Sept – 4 Oct 2025
‘Intelligent and fresh’ ★★★
A recording studio with two voice artists at work is the setting for Cerys Jones’s play. Annie and Harry meet for the first time to provide the dialogue for some erotic audio porn. This is his first gig, although he does have experience as an escort for women in their fifties.
She, American, brisk, no-nonsense is a transactional feminist, who’s been at this game for some time. She enunciates some of her script in inverted commas with raised eyebrows, and occasionally sounds like Marge Simpson. He has a floppy fringe, is educated with a smooth manner, and audio-porn-curious. He believes in ‘giving’ some of himself to work while she prefers to detach and just do the job.
Throughout the course of one recording session, seventy-five minutes, regularly interjected by the voice over of the director, we see these two very different individuals, feel each other out and challenge each other’s beliefs. In this industry, where they both service the sexual fantasies of others, who has the upper hand? Who is being the most exploitative? The most helpful? Who earns the most money? Who has more power?
There is a great deal of situational comedy in these two handers, as they move in and out of breathy, orgasmic dialogue and its accompanying improbable scenario - into everyday repartee, but it’s best when it overlaps. The sight of Annie (Laura Shipler Chico) plucking a hair from her chin while mouthing a high note orgasm is hilarious. Harry (Will Tusker) is revealed as a bit passive aggressive and perhaps starts to feel threatened or emasculated by Annie, as his gentle flirtascous nature starts to bare teeth.
There are few things worse than having to work with people you don’t like or see eye to eye with - and as the tension gradually rises, the dramatic climax is more of a shudder than a shake. Given the set-up, it can’t avoid being a static performance as the duo sit or stand throughout. Although It’s cleverly meta: two performers perform performing, it’s slow burn battle of wits, perhaps too slow - but nonetheless it’s intelligent, and fresh with several laugh aloud moments.
BOX OFFICE https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/the-work-we-do
