"The Receptionist" Revival Misses Its Call

 

Shows get revived for all kinds of reasons. Maybe they were under appreciated in the past. Or they may have something particularly relevant to say about current events. A director may have come up with an innovative way to tell the old story. Or a producer may believe that a familiar comfort-food title will sell tickets. And sometimes a star wants to take a crack at an iconic role, to give a boost to a favorite one or just to try something different from what they've done before.

As its name suggests, the Second Stage theater company was created to do revivals that would give living American playwrights a second chance to get their work onto a New York stage. And right now 2ndStage, as it likes to bill itself, is having a terrific success with a star-studded revival of Becky Shaw, Gina Gionfriddo’s 2009 Pulitzer finalist centered around a bad blind date and the interlocking network of unhappy people connected to it. I had a terrific time at this dark comedy, liking it even more than I did when I first saw it back in 2008 (click here to read my earlier review).  

And it isn't just me who's feeling that way either. This new Becky Shaw has picked up nominations for Best Revival from the Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle and the Tony nominators. The New York Drama Critics Circle gave its Best Individual Performance award to the production’s star Alden Ehrenreich.

Meanwhile, I was looking forward to seeing what the company would do with The Receptionist, a cautionary tale by Adam Bock that shook me when I saw it in 2007 with Jayne Houdyshell in the title role and that is now being revived with the two-time Tony winner Katie Finneran. You wouldn’t normally expect to see the easy-going Houdyshell and the high-spirited Finneran going up for the same role but I figured it would be fun to see what different choices such very different actors might make.  

The Receptionist, which opened at the Pershing Square Signature Center this week, is set in the kind of brightly-lit and blandly decorated office that might serve as the gathering spot in a TV sitcom. Its titular character, a woman named Beverly, would fit right into that kind of show too. She’s the office busybody, nudge, and self-appointed social activities organizer. 

When the play opens her boss is unusually late but that means that Beverly and her co-worker Lorraine have more time to gossip. When a man from the central office arrives, Beverly tries to cover for the boss’ absence. Lorraine flirts with the guy. So far, so sitcom. But then about a third of the way into this tight 80-minute play one of them makes a casual comment about a recent meeting that sends the whole thing careening into the kind of storyline that might turn up on an episode of the sci-fi series “Black Mirror.”

The two things I remember most from seeing The Receptionist in 2007 was how knocked out I was by Houdyshell’s performance and how shaken I was by the growing sense of unease as it became clearer to me what the business of the office was and how easy it can be for nice, likeable people to do really horrible things. Alas, I didn’t feel any of that while watching this revival. 

Finneran is a very gifted comedienne and director Sarah Benson gives the actress plenty of room to do what she does best, which means lots of little bits of comic business that drew big laughs from the audience at the performance my theatergoing buddy Bill and I attended (click here to read an interview with the actress). But Finneran seemed a lot less sure of herself as the tone shifted into more serious territory and our view of Beverly becomes more complicated. And that unbalanced the whole evening for me.

The play itself is as relevant today as it was 20 years ago when the recent wounds of 9/11 had the country debating how far the government should go to keep Americans safe, what the definition of safety should be and how much responsibility each of us should bear for the actions taken to secure it. With its emphasis on the humor that admittedly was always there, this production makes it OK to smile and then look away, to pretend that things may not be as bad as they seem. It’s taken the cautionary out of the tale.

Out and About in "The Drunken City"

It wasn’t so long ago that gay people in plays were tragic figures who were struggling to come out or battling AIDS or sassy wiseacres who provided comic relief. But we now live in a different pop- cultural world, where a growing number of high schools have gay-straight alliances, rock stars like R.E.M’s Michael Stipe are openly gay and perhaps the most beloved character on the cult HBO crime drama “The Wire” was Omar, a stick-up artist, equally devoted to robbing drug dealers and romancing his male lovers.

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a different kind of gay character popping up in new plays too. From Clarice Bernstein, the beleaguered presidential speechwriter played by Laurie Metcalf in David Mamet’s November; to Howie, the teenager who is totally unself-conscious about his sexuality in Stephen Karam’s Speech & Debate, these gay characters are the most stable and self-assured people in their shows. And now comes Adam Bock’s The Drunken City with two gay characters who are not only the anchors for their flighty friends but also of this meditation on love and marriage among today’s tewentysomethings.

I got a kick out of Bock’s last play, The Receptionist, and so I decided to see this new one without knowing a thing about it. My buddy Bill, always game for a theater adventure, met me at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, one of the new spaces that Playwrights Horizons operates on 42nd Street, where The Drunken City is playing through April 20. The one-act show, which centers around six young singles who meet, hook up and fall out on a drunken night on the town, is slight but appropriately giddy and Bill and I had a good time.

Bock specializes in snappy dialog that sounds like the kind of thing that people, or at least I, always wish they had said. The performances by the good-looking, interracial cast, lead by Cassie Beck's amusingly conflicted bride-to-be, is yet more proof that New York City is currently overflowing with a bumper crop of talented young actors. And David Korins’ clever set design, aided by Matthew Richards’ nimble lighting and Bart Fasbender’s smart sound design, create an evocative cityscape.

But what really struck me is the way the gay guys are portrayed. They don’t have swishy, stereotypical jobs—one’s a dentist, the other a baker. They’re comfortable hanging out with straight friends. Their concerns are ones we all share: how to care for our friends, where to find love and how to be true to one’s self. Having gay people portrayed just as people, now that's truly intoxicating.

A Brief Encounter with "The Receptionist"

There are so many holiday-themed shows running between Thanksgiving and New Years that you wouldn't think a play centered around a chubby middle-aged woman who answers telephones for a living would be the choice for a multi-generational family outing during Christmas week. Yet sitting behind me at the Manhattan Theatre Club's production of The Receptionist were a grandmother and her three grandkids, who looked to be between the ages of 12 and 19. And, for the most part, they also looked to be having a pretty good time.

Perhaps they were primed for the show by its seeming similarity to "The Office," the NBC sitcom about an obnoxious boss and the poor saps who work for him. Or maybe they were simply amused, as I was, by Jayne Houdyshell's pitch-perfect performance as the good-natured busybody familiar to every workplace. And I suspect that the now-notorious twist in the play may have appealed to the sense of the macabre that, if the current popularity of horror movies is any indication, seems to excite lots of young people these days. "I wasn't so sure about this at the start," I overheard the grandson say during the curtain call. "But then things started getting interesting." Finally, I imagine that the play's running time may also have played a part in their enjoyment. The Receptionist runs just 70 intermission-less minutes.

I'm a big fan of one-act plays. Unlike the opera, where you get a comfortable 30 minutes or so of intermission, the 10 to 15 minute breaks during plays always strike me as stingy and a waste of time and effort. By the time you shove your way into the lobby, it's time to shove your way back to your seat. Which is why I rarely leave mine. I also like the fact that a short performance gets you out at a decent hour so that you can go somewhere afterwards and linger over dinner talking about the show or, if you choose, find a cab home easily since the other shows haven't yet let out. But 70 minutes kind of startled me.

The brevity of The Receptionist seemed to take the rest of the audience by surprise too. When the stage lights went out, signaling the end of the show, it took a few seconds for the applause to start and even then it was tepid, although people had laughed and, in some cases even gasped, out loud during the performance. I think we all felt cheated.

Going to the theater obviously isn't like renting a car or seeing a shrink, you don’t pay for it by the hour. But the regular ticket price for The Receptionist, which ends its run this weekend, is $75, and that works out to more than a dollar a minute. I don't bear any resentment towards Houydshell and her co-stars—Josh Charles, Robert Foxworth and Kendra Kassebaum—who were all terrific. Or towards playwright Adam Bock, whose play deftly captures these distressing times; or director Joe Mantello, who paced the work perfectly; or sound designer Darron L. West, who created just the right undercurrent of menace. But shouldn't someone at MTC have made the call that asking folks to pay more than a buck a minute for a performance is, well, distressing.

Luckily, other theater companies and producers are looking for ways to make theater more affordable for more people. Playwrights Horizons has a number of programs including Hot Tix, which sells $20 tickets to people who can prove they’re 30 or under; and LIVEforFIVE, an online lottery that offers $5 tickets for first preview performances (click here to see all of its discount programs). And earlier this month, the producers of August: Osage County, The Homecoming, and November announced a package deal to see all three for $199 (click here for more details on that offer).

I don't know how often the young people who sat behind me at The Receptionist go to the theater. But I think seeing it may have persuaded them that a live show can be just as enthralling as a movie at the Cineplex. Alas, it may also have made them think that going to the theater is something that you can only afford to do when an indulgent, well-heeled grandmother takes you.