Jobsworth is billed as a riotous comedy about a woman, Bea, juggling multiple jobs, some overlapping with others. A handbag dog that she is paid to look after ends up being smuggled into her office drawer most mornings. This black comedy presents the financial trap she is in and it is performed by Libby Rodliffe with caffeinated speed and great verbal dexterity. But beneath the vitality is a tragedy waiting to happen, it seems, just inches away from Bea’s bionic hustling (“All this is fine, mostly fine,” she says, tightly).
Bea is a personal assistant, data inputter and overseer of luxury flats as well as a dog-sitter. Rodliffe, who wrote the monologue with Isley Lynn, plays every character, from Bea’s depressed father whose debts she takes on to a mother who she feels has left her in the lurch financially, alongside various venal and demanding employers.
