★★★★

“This is very dark stuff, delivered with panache and pace”

Libby Rodliffe first introduced her character Bea, a young woman juggling three jobs, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2024. There, it ran to sell-out audiences and notched up great reviews.

Jobsworth is now having a run at the Park Theatre and this one-woman show, co written by Rodliffe and Isley Lynn, deserves every accolade I hope it gets. It is an extraordinary tour de force for Rodliffe who delivers non-stop laughs and multiple personalities, each with their own distinct accent and characteristics, over a roller coaster 90 minute performance.

Like other notable female monologues, mostly Fleabag (onstage) and Prima Facie, Jobsworth delivers a serious message, even if dressed up as comedy. This time the target is the gig economy and the uphill task of making ends meet while working for impossible employers demanding absolute commitment for the minimum living wage. Anyone sitting cosily in a well-paid permanent job escapes this position purely by a twist of fate.

Bea can manage this situation because she has wit and will, can turn on a coin and she cares. Slowly revealed in the background are her parents adding extra stress (and quite a few laughs to the mix – her father takes snakes for a walk on a leash, just to give you an idea). They have their own problems and Bea is trying to help them. So the screw slowly turns towards an explosive ending.

This is very dark stuff, delivered with panache and pace. Director Nicky Allpress has kept everything simple. The set (Matthew Cassar) is a simple white oval desk overhung with a string of round paper lampshades which change colour to punctuate, with sound tones, the turns and reversals.

If I have one criticism it is that the pace is so fast that I often found myself confused by what was happening and which character was being presented at any one moment. Over the course of the performance this became less of a problem. The differences became more apparent as we got to know the non-existent cast.

Nevertheless, this is an important commentary on our times, delivered with extraordinary versatility by Rodliffe and sharp humour to make us sit up and take notice – as we should.

THE CHAOS THAT HAS BEEN AND WILL NO DOUBT RETURN

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★★

“There is humour in abundance – terrible gin, awkward meet-cutes, frantic booze runs – but Edmunds also weaves in harder truths”

One night in Luton. Sounds like hell. But it’s going to be a trip.

There will be tears. There will be laughter. You will make friends and say goodbye.

But don’t be frightened, two best mates – familiar because they’re everyone’s best mate ¬– are taking us on a tour both of their own turf and their outlook in writer-director Sam Edmunds dazzling, vibrant and rocking anthem to teenage kicks.

It’s sometime in the 2000s. A house party is the frame – we’re going from pre-drinks bravado to dazed aftermath – but what Chalk Line Theatre delivers is an odyssey into the heart of a community, co-directed with Vikesh Godhwani and performed with unrelenting, heart-pounding gusto.

This is Under Milk Wood for millennials.

Nathaniel Christian and Elan Butler – both remarkable for their stamina and craft – explode onto the stage, whipping up the audience before we have even caught our breath. Leanne Henlon joins them in a carousel of cameos: mums, mates, corner-shop clerks, each sketched with quick wit and affectionate precision.

Rob Miles’s set of looming brick blocks doubles as playground, alley, shop and living room, while Matteo Depares’s sound design adds percussive punch to accompany chest-thumps and fist-bangs.

It is high-energy stuff, rattling along at 100 miles an hour. The dancing is contagious. The flirting gorgeous. The bond between the bros becomes one we love and share, and the audience is part of the gang from the outset, the trio exuding charm through clouds of Lynx Africa, fist-bumping their new pals in the front row.

The text is rich in 00s detail: Tinie Tempah on tinny speakers, Blackberrys buzzing in pockets, fake Ralph Laurens worn like armour. There is humour in abundance – terrible gin, awkward meet-cutes, frantic booze runs – but Edmunds also weaves in harder truths. Debt as a weight. Futures clouded by recession, tuition fees, and the claustrophobic squeeze of austerity Britain. Adults dream of better, but as one character notes, “People round here walk as if they are being held back.”

What keeps the play aloft is its refusal to demonise. It never pillories working-class kids on council estates; instead, it honours their energy, humour and ¬– above all – hope. Hope is the dope.

If there is fury, it comes from fear; if there is violence, it is the consequence of deprivation. The writing is affectionate, sharp, and sometimes filthy but everyone in the audience recognises something from their own youth in this pick’n’mix panorama of bluster and pain.

The cast’s commitment is total. Narrator Christian sustains the pace, anchoring the whirlwind with charisma and warmth. He is our Captain Cat, seeing through windows and into souls. Butler – with a cheerful loping melancholy – bounces between bravado and vulnerability, Henlon dazzles with her versatility, dancer, temptress, bully. Together they radiate raw joy. Even when tragedy strikes, the finale brims with uplift. It is impossible not to leave smiling.

This is theatre as rallying cry. Against knife crime, against despair, for pride of place and community, for ground-up revolution. Chalk Line has an excellent track record but The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return feels like the clincher.

JOBSWORTH

Park Theatre

★★★★

“This is very dark stuff, delivered with panache and pace”

JOBSWORTH

Park Theatre

Reviewed on 21st November 2025

by Louise Sibley

Photography by Harry Elletson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

JOBSWORTH

JOBSWORTH

JOBSWORTH

THE CHAOS THAT HAS BEEN AND WILL NO DOUBT RETURN

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★★

“There is humour in abundance – terrible gin, awkward meet-cutes, frantic booze runs – but Edmunds also weaves in harder truths”