The Receptionist - 2ST

[kurtal]

Posted: 4/16/26 at 9:32pm

Has anyone else seen this?

Saw it tonight and thought it was a miss.  Cast is working hard to make the material work, but they don't have much to work with.  Structure of the show seems a mess.  

I'd be very curious to hear how others respond -- especially a bit farther into previews.

[Theater3232]

Posted: 4/17/26 at 7:47am

What is the running time?  

Updated On: 4/17/26 at 07:47 AM

[Matt Rogers]

Posted: 4/17/26 at 9:35am

Theater3232 said: "What is the running time?"

I saw the original production and it was only an hour long. 

[kurtal]

Posted: 4/17/26 at 10:19am

Matt Rogers said: "Theater3232 said: "What is the running time?"

I saw the original production and it was only an hour long."

Signs in the lobby said 85 minutes, and I think that's about right.  

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 4/20/26 at 12:48am

I've been struggling with this, as I can kind of understand what the play wants to do but I think it just doesn't know how to get there.  There's a pretty clear demarcation between two halves of the play, and I wish they blurred the edges of that a bit more, or just committed fully to the events that happen in the second half.  I think they wanted the tone of the play to be very blase and in doing that make the events that happen all the more chilling, but it just seemed like the tone was at odds with where the play ended up.  The audience felt very confused by the ending and it was only when one person started clapping loudly after the blackout that everyone else seemed to realize it was the actual ending of the play.

It's probably best to come into this blind, so I'll put more specific thoughts in a spoiler box:

 

Click Here To Toggle Spoiler Content

I wish there was more worldbuilding around the setting.  Are we meant to think this is an alternate universe where the government is forthright about torturing people and everyone just goes along with it because they believe that needs to be done or is this meant to be our actual existing government?  Something about the design made me think it was the 70s or 80s but then they mention laptops which I think were more recent than that?

The first fly fishing monologue feels like a wasted moment.  Mr. Raymond asking "shall we try this again" makes it seem like he's actively in an interrogation session, but we don't see any of his later doubt that forms the inciting incident of the play, and I didn't feel that it was quite out there enough to unsettle me in preparation for what we'd discover about what the office does.  And I found it also confusing/inconsistent that he was in the metal box while he was presumably torturing someone else while Beverly got put in it in the end when she was presumably about to be tortured.

But I think overall it just doesn't feel as tightly plotted as it would like to believe.  The description calls it a "jet-black comedy about bureaucracy and complicity" but I feel like it never pushed at those edges enough to actually ask the questions it seems to think it asks.  If you had zoned out just for a moment during the finger breaking conversation you could practically think it was still a regular office workplace, and the play ends just as things start to get interesting with Mr. Raymond's disappearance and Lorraine's subsequent flight.

And that's the other part that I don't understand, why do they need an office if their main job is torturing people?  There's no mention of "fieldwork" or any idea that the office is not where their usual 9-5 is since people are calling all day expecting the employees to be there.  So what are they even doing in their office the whole time?

I looked up the responses from the last iteration of the play to see if it had been done differently, and I see a lot of similar thoughts to how unsatisfying it was, as well as the same kind of nonchalant tone in the direction, and I just wish that this production had tried to approach it in a different way: https://forum.broadwayworld.com/thread/The-Receptionist--SPOILER-ALERT

[AC126748]

Posted: 4/20/26 at 10:44am

I remember the original production being a whole lot of nothing. Charles Isherwood was the second-string critic at the Times during that era, and he was a champion of Adam Bock's writing, so of course it got a love letter. A friend of mine who worked for MTC at the time said she'd never seen so many walk-outs and angry calls from subscribers asking what the hell they'd just seen. My memory is that it was only 70 minutes.

The revival has a solid cast and director, but I'm in no hurry to revisit.