[NEohioPAL] Tony Brown on "The Receptionist"

[Jennifer Klika]

Dobama Theatre opens darkly ironic 'Receptionist'


by  <mailto:tbrown at plaind.com> Tony Brown/Plain Dealer Theater Critic 


Saturday March 14, 2009, 7:52 AM


REVIEW 

"The Receptionist" 
When: Through Sunday, April 5.
Where: Pilgrim Congregational Church, 2592 West 14th St., Cleveland.
Tickets: $15-$22. Call 216-932-3396 or go to  <http://dobama.org/>
Dobama.org.

Since the post-World War II white-collar revolution, the office and its
bureaucratic denizens have made fodder for entertainment. Think "Glengarry
Glen Ross," "The Apartment" and "The Office."

Now comes playwright Adam Bock with "The Receptionist," a quirky dark comedy
that asks: Would desk jockeys who work where torture is the stock-in-trade
behave the same as those who deal in widgets? 

The 2007 play made its area debut Friday night at Pilgrim Congregational
Church in a production by Dobama Theatre. A 15-minute curtain-raiser in the
same vein, "H.R.," by Cleveland Heights playwright Eric Coble, opens the
90-minute evening. 

After a brief prologue about the joys of fly-fishing, "The Receptionist"
segues to the "Northeast office" of an unnamed company where a typical
workday morning is in progress. 

The receptionist (Lissy Gulick, motherly, in ways good and scary) chats with
friends on the phone, brags about teacups she collects, dispenses personal
advice, makes pastry runs and occasionally even works. 

The female second-in-command of the office (Jennifer Klika, sexy and sobby)
arrives late yet again, frets over being "in love with a narcissist," wants
to bed every man with two legs, and shares her secrets with all. 

Into this quotidian milieu struts a stranger with wraparound shades and an
obsequious manner (Tom Woodward, inscrutably pleasant and evil) from the
"central office," who asks to see the boss. 

We grow vaguely aware that something isn't kosher in this inner-scape of
flat screens and potted plants, and then the boss (Michael Regnier, laconic
and bellicose) walks in and casually says something about having had to
break a client's fingers yesterday. 

Tidily directed with emphasis on the ironic by Dobama artistic director Joel
Hammer, the play suggests there are no innocents in an enterprise where
somebody, on the next floor up or the next office over, practices evil. Even
the lady who answers the phone is suspect. 

Think about that next time you boot up, sign on and plug into the Monday
morning routine. 

While we're on the subject of Dobama, it should be noted that while designer
Michael Roesch does a spectacular job in the limiting environs of Pilgrim
Church, this nomadic company has happier days ahead: It starts renovations
in two weeks on its new home, the old Cleveland Heights YMCA on Lee Road. 

Working overtime

"H.R.," a light and tasty appetizer commissioned by Dobama, utilizes the
same actors to lampoon office behavior (and misbehavior) as four employees
of the "Midwest office" face a threat as terrifying as torture: a visit from
human resources. 

Coble neatly reverses gender roles. Gulick is the alpha dog this time and
Regnier her receptionist; Woodward is the airhead and Klika oddly scary.
It's all agreeably short and amusing. 

Coble, the busiest of Cleveland's strong contingent of playwrights, has been
especially fully employed of late. 

In addition to being on the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Board of
Education (a fate possibly more trying than torture or human resources),
Coble has this going on: 

"Southern Rapture," a comedy commissioned by Actor's Theatre of Charlotte,
N.C., which opens Wednesday, April 15. It's about a controversial 1995
production in the Carolinas' biggest city of Tony Kushner's "Angels in
America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes." 

A New York staged reading Monday, April 27, of the musical "The Tapioca
Miracle." Broadway veteran John Rando ("Urinetown") directs and Broadway
diva Karen Ziemba stars as a woman who sees the face of the prophet Ezekiel
in her pudding. 

And writing adaptations for Oregon Children's Theatre and the Cleveland Play
House Children's Theatre. He has a short script in Jubilee 2009, the
international debt-relief project, that goes up in two weeks. 

 

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