[NEohioPAL] Review of Cleveland Public Theatre's "Gloria"

[Bob Abelman]

Cleveland Public Theatre underserves Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ ‘Gloria’



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

  

Donald Trump tweets that the press is “dangerous and sick” and the “true enemy of the people.” He may be right if Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Gloria” – a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist currently on stage at Cleveland Public Theatre – is any indication.



The play is primarily set in the toxic Manhattan offices of a trendy national magazine and revolves around a group of ruthlessly ambitious, thoroughly self-absorbed, and genuinely despicable 20-something editorial assistants (Michael Prosen, Sarah Maria Yannie and Evangeline Zhiyi Han).  These miserable cubicle dwellers are abusive to and threatened by an ambivalent intern (Isaiah Betts), easily dismiss the clinically depressed 37-year-old chief fact-checker (Keith Kornajcik), and take their brutal passive aggressiveness out on an unassuming and awkward colleague named Gloria (Sally Groth), a longtime copy editor.  They seem to hate everything, including each other.



The humor is typical Jacobs-Jenkins:  dark like “An Octoroon,” cruel and acidic like “Appropriate” and, at times, terribly funny like “Neighbors” and so many others.  And like these plays, there is much more than meets the eye in terms of insightful and biting social commentary.  Here, the playwright addresses the loss of identity and human connection in this era of social media, the death of print media – figuratively and literally (warning: this play contains gunshots and graphic violence) – as well as the media industry’s parasitic tendency to feast on and monetize human tragedy.



Sadly, much of the humor and meaningful underpinnings are never fully realized in this production.



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/
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