Achieving a level of immersive verisimilitude that lesser artists could only dream of, the producers behind the current revival of Adam Bock's dark comedy have successfully recreated the agonizing monotony of the corporate workplace simply by staging a production entirely devoid of specificity or bite.
Achieving a level of immersive verisimilitude that lesser artists could only dream of, the producers behind the current revival of Adam Bock's 'The Receptionist' have successfully recreated the agonizing, soul-crushing monotony of the American corporate workplace simply by staging a production entirely devoid of momentum, dramatic tension, or bite. Where traditional theater seeks to entertain or provoke, this visionary staging dares to subject its paying audience to the exact psychic decay experienced by a mid-level administrative assistant staring at a blinking multi-line telephone on a Tuesday afternoon; it is a profound, unendurable slog that leaves the spectator physically diminished and spiritually bankrupt.
To fully comprehend the breathtaking void at the center of this theatrical achievement, one must trace a lineage of aesthetic exhaustion that begins, naturally, with the suffocating domestic paralysis of Henrik Ibsen's 'Hedda Gabler'; winds its way through the relentless, mechanical choreography of Vsevolod Meyerhold's 1922 biomechanical stage exercises; and culminates, inevitably, in the grim, fluorescent-lit purgatory of the 2009 cinematic enterprise 'Paul Blart: Mall Cop'. In each of these touchstones, we see humanity crushed beneath the weight of its own structural confines, yet none commit to the bit quite so ruthlessly as this revival, which bravely refuses to offer its viewers a single memorable line delivery or a solitary moment of genuine pathos, opting instead for a generalized, beige malaise that stretches into eternity.
The play's critics, demonstrating their typical inability to grasp the avant-garde, have lamented the production's stale execution and its failure to excavate the darker, more jagged edges of Bock's original script. What these simple-minded scribes fail to realize is that a sharp, engaging narrative would fundamentally betray the lived reality of the modern receptionist, whose existence is not characterized by thrilling dramatic arcs, but rather by the slow, inexorable dripping of a malfunctioning breakroom coffee maker.
If we had provided the audience with pacing, specificity, or a reason to care about these characters, we would have provided them an escape, and the American office worker is allowed no such mercy.
As the curtain falls—if one can even call the sluggish, apologetic dimming of the stage lights a fall—the audience is left precisely where the administrative underclass resides: desperate to leave, acutely aware of the time they have wasted, and entirely unsure of what they have accomplished. It is a masterclass in atmospheric hostility; a towering achievement of boredom that will surely be remembered as the definitive statement on the death of the American dream, or at least, the death of an otherwise perfectly serviceable Wednesday evening.