Will Pullen and Katie Finneran in The Receptionist. Photo: Joan Marcus
How could playwright Adam Bock have anticipated the sturdiness of his dystopian 2007 playlet The Receptionist? When it debuted at City Center in 2007, the horrors of Abu Ghraib were unfurling in the headlines as the trials unfolded. Did any of us ingenuously imagine then that the U.S. government’s egregious abuse of power in Iraq under George W. Bush, exposed for all to see, was a one-off? Our nation’s assault on human rights has since escalated past the point of incredulity. Flat-out concentration camps, on our own soil, now represent business as usual. Guantanamo Prison is in play again.
I fear I am giving too much away. By all means, go see the play while innocently expecting a workplace comedy, because that’s a good portion of what you’ll get.
Katie Finneran plays the nosy, motherly title character, Beverly Wilkins (perfect period ensembles by Enver Chakartash). Since there’s not a whole lot going on in this curiously quiet office (design by dots, deadening light by Stacey Derosier and Bailey Costa), she keeps busy tidying up the place and gossiping with friends on the phone. Finneran is a master of micro-expressions: the one-sided conversations we’re hearing come fully alive.
We learn that Bev – who shares a passion for collecting English teacups with her spouse – is relatively strait-laced: she berates a phone friend for fooling around with a married man. Similarly, she chides a young exec, Lorraine Taylor (Mallori Johnson) – evidently a superior, since she rates a private office – for flirting with an emissary from the “Central Office.” Martin Dart (Will Pullen) is handsome and openly flirtatious, though he admits to being married and the father of a young child. Is this dapper smooth-talker a devil in disguise? His bright-red socks just might be a tell.
In what is perhaps the only anachronism, Lorraine justifies the possibility of poaching because she’s “lonely” – consequences be damned. While women in their twenties will probably continue to operate compunction-free, the societal compulsion to mate up – indeed, to mate at all – seems to have abated somewhat in the past two decades.
But intraoffice romance is the least of the professional hazards affecting this small cadre of co-workers. About halfway into what appears to be a seriocomic gloss on The Office, we get a glimpse of exactly what kind of business these colleagues are in. The boss (Nael Nacer) whirls through at one point – in a prefatory scene, we got an eerie glimpse of him discoursing on the elegance of fishing vs. hunting – and suddenly everyone’s career prospects, indeed their very odds of survival, are in flux.
The current administration’s crackdown on DEI within the business sphere – an early warning sign of Trump II’s agenda – was child’s play compared to the nightmare Bock was positing. The question that hovers over this timely revival is: Parody or reportage?
Details: The Receptionist, to May 24