Review: WORK HARD HAVE FUN MAKE HISTORY at Raven Theatre

When you really stop to think about it, the late stage capitalist grind we find ourselves in (or rather, that billionaires and certain politicians have forced upon us) has created a disembodied culture marked by rampant labor, optimized efficiency, and fractured connections — and that’s a pretty absurd way to live life. But how many of us really stop to think about it? First Floor Theater’s Chicago premiere production of Work Hard Have Fun Make History, written by reid tang and directed by Tiny El Gamal, compels you to think about it for 90 minutes straight and brings that absurdity to a head in this experimental dark comedy. 

Sahar Dika, Jenn Geiger, and Alice Wu enter as workers in a warehouse, clocking into work and monotonously — and then manically — moving boxes around with humanly robotic expressions. With the show framed as “a catalog of all the possible phone calls that exist,” we indeed start with hold music before launching into a series of phone conversations and corresponding scenes, from customer service to intimate connections to bidding to prophecy selling to a conversation between mother and unborn baby. The acting from the cast during these initial scenes is strong, if not slightly confusing at times as we have to reconcile the rapid voiceover conversations with the acting with little context and unclear transitions. 

The first spoken dialogue from the trio cast comes well after a third into the play. With the show’s title coming from Amazon’s (in)famous internal motto, Jeff (Sahar Dika) is destined to make an appearance, alongside his buddy Elon (Alice Wu). With kpop as their walk-on song, the billionaires camp out in a bunker away from Earth and brainstorm ways to continue to build wealth. Wu’s performance of Elon particularly captures the stupidity, arrogance, and ridiculousness of the character’s namesake, though I think Wu and Dika both give these effigies more humanity and self-awareness than reality warrants. There is some sweet comeuppance for these billionaires by the end as we come full circle with a phone service representative named Annie who makes multiple appearances throughout various scenes that must provide assistance after Jeff’s iWhip 2.0 artificial assistant fails to respond. 

The creative team adds another dimension of absurdity to the show. The set is made up of boxes, thanks to brilliant scenic design by Spencer Donovan and prop design by Lolo Ramos. Boxes are arranged and re-arranged as lockers, doors, chairs, and slots for packages and beanie babies to fall through. Conchita Avita’s lighting design includes a JEFF sign inspired by TED talks to lit phone booths to mandatory top-of-the-hour conditioning with club lighting and electronic music from sound designer Jae Robinson. The costume design by Nathan Rohrer ranges from standard warehouse vests to a frumpy baby outfit that Dika steals the scene in and fully embraces. 

With a loose narrative structure that embodies the existentialist heart of absurd theater, Work Hard Have Fun Make History uncovers truths about our current moment and where we are headed if nothing changes through genre-bending depth and humor, while forcing us to consider our innate longing for connection and the deeper meaning of humanity.

Expect some scenes to go over your head. As we go from warehouse work to data scrapping and surveillance to natural landscapes going through an identity crisis (which can be interpreted as an ecological metaphor for gender identity and trans/queerness), to tech bro billionaires to artificial intelligence and then back again, it can be tricky to keep track of the transitions and throughlines and callbacks to previous scenes and characters. These fragmented vignettes culminate to broader themes of labor, alienation, and the absurdities of modern capitalism, but the viewer has to be fully mentally engaged to piece them all together. 

If you’re looking for a lighthearted show after work to turn your brain off to, this is not the show for you. If you’re looking for a theatrical experience of existential dread and cerebral laughs to make meaning of the climate, consumerist, and cognizant collapse of society, then make sure you stop by Raven Theatre before June 6. 

Work Hard Have Fun Make History runs through June 6, 2026 on the Schwartz Stage at Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St. Tickets are $40, with a limited number of $10 access tickets available for all performances, which can be purchased at the link below.

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Best Sound Design - Top 3

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