There’s often a big problem with little plays, those that clock in at 90 minutes or less. While audiences like getting home early, it could be asked of them, “Why didn’t you just stay home?”
Adam Bock’s new play, “The Receptionist,” opened Thursday at the Pershing Square Signature Center, where it is presented by Second Stage. It runs 80 minutes and takes about 40 to get to the shocker.
The very sterile office space (scenic design by Dots) will be familiar to anyone who has spent too much of his or her life in one of these work spaces. For those workers, the set will be instantly anxiety-inducing. At the center is the receptionist’s desk. Katie Finneran is enthroned there, her Beverly character answering the phone, making coffee and cleaning up after her boss, Edward (Nael Nacer), and another worker, Lorraine (Mallori Johnson), both of whom have offices with doors that they often keep closed. It’s the way Beverly handles her hand-held Bissell to pick up her coworkers’ muffin crumbs that most gives her away as being a petty fascist.
Beverly meets more than her match when a man, Martin (Will Pullen), arrives from the Central Office. They get into a minor spat right away over her collection of ink pens. They sit like a bouquet of dead flowers on her immaculate desk. He wants to use one. She says her pens keep disappearing. Martin wins that battle, and when he finally sits down, one of Beverly’s precious pens in hand, his black trousers pull up to expose bright red socks (costumes by Enver Chakartash). Game over. He’s the authoritarian with real power, not Beverly.
The moment their characters meet, Johnson and Pullen signal that Lorraine and Martin would like to screw despite Beverly’s strong but wordless objection.
Sarah Benson’s direction is at its best in this three-way tug of lust. Before and after this extended scene, Benson can’t really be faulted for letting Finneran go wild with her mannerisms. Watching this actor’s mind work overtime is often the only thing holding our attention. “The Receptionist” doesn’t really take focus until Edward mentions having to break a client’s little finger. Beverly’s reaction lets us know that breaking a client’s little finger may not be business as usual. Then again, it’s not all that unusual either.
In Beverly’s world, “going to the Central Office,” run by Martin, is to be avoided at all costs.
Bock’s intention may be that his audience should imagine what that penalty is. For this audience member, that is the second act he has failed to write.
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