Who's Serving Who?

What I liked

Kelsie is an excellent, excellent actor— dynamic and hilarious.

What I didn't like

The script needs to be tighter all around— Kelsie is good at making fun of herself, but I felt like 80% of the story was her playing up to stereotypes/caricatures of how people/“patrons of the restaurant” incorrectly perceive her. More time was spent on that, rather than giving us insight on who the character really is. The quiet moments where she’s away from the restaurant talking to her mom, dad, and doctor were the only connecting threads to who Sydney actually is, and I think that was only a few minutes of the whole show. We needed a lot more of that to balance the high energy and zaniness of everything else that was happening.

I also think the venue itself did not lend very well to the story— there was an enormous amount of space that went unused, and it added to the feeling of feeling like there was a little too much going on to ground us in an actual story.

Also, I was curious about the title. What does it mean in this story? We never get a sense of Sydney “getting served” by anyone else, and she is clearly the only person serving, so I found that to be very confusing.

My overall impression

I really loved Kelsie and her incredible performance, but I wanted so much more out of this show. I found myself very lost at the script level. Although there were plenty of laughs, I didn’t know what the actual story was, and the payoff/final punchline fell flat because I didn’t feel invested in the emotional journey of the character.