The Receptionist *SPOILER ALERT*

I agree. It did remind me of a twilight zone episode. It was intriguing but unsatisfying.

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The Receptionist is a show I'm still buzzing over. I found it to be an incredibly satisfying theatrical experience and haven't stopped thinking about it since. It's one of those shows where the main goal of the playwright is to leave you guessing about what actually happened. The plot is in everything that was not said.

The idea is that they're working for some government agency, an unnamed one, at that, which specializes in interrogating criminals.

Mr. Raymond did something wrong (perhaps during the interrogation which began the show...his flyfishing monologue), which prompted Mr. Dart to visit and drag him away. Knowing that anyone close to the person being interrogated is brought in, Lorraine flees. This leaves Beverly, the happy idiot receptionist, who may or may not know more than she lets on. I, for the record, do believe she knows more than she lets on, as she states how she feels they're doing the right thing.

It's a play that combines the banality of the modern office, from Beanie Baby decorations to spider plants on desks, with Hannah Arendt's idea of the banality of evil.

(Banality of evil stems from Arendt's research of the Eichmann trial and how, since Eichmann displayed no real anti-semetic traits and only had a desire to improve his careerpath, he simply felt he was "doing his job.")

Lorraine and Mr. Raymond are so non-chalant about "breaking his little finger" or "working his feet," almost as if it doesn't effect them.

That said, The Receptionist is an incredibly thought-provoking work. Even if you hated it beyond belief, it still got you thinking and Bock's goal was met.

Updated On: 10/28/07 at 10:58 PM

I agree with the abrupt ending comment, but I am not sure it could have ended any other way.

I found it thought provoking, somewhat scary, and a little under examined. There could have been more detail, depth, in the work but I saw it the first week of previews so it may have changed by now...

In trying to explain the piece to my sister (by way of explaining why I was sort of in a touchy mood after seeing it) I said it was an interesting piece, with a frightening backdrop of what the world could become/may have already become. I was actually surprised by the plot twist, and I can usually see them coming for miles away (possibly because imagining Josh Charles as a bad guy was so far fetched for me, or because I purposely avoided any posts/reviews/etc. before attending).

I'll be interested to see what other people think as over three weeks later I'm still not completely sure what I think.

I saw it early in previews, when the show was still running a solid hour and a half. Now, as I understand it, it's running a little over an hour (bout an hour-5, an hour-10?).

I can't help but wonder what cuts they've made, since, well, they've taken a huge chunk out of the show. I wonder how detrimental they are to the show which, in the early stages (and in the early drafts), was incredibly well-thought out vision and examination of what the world could become as our civil liberties are slowly taken away.

Yes, the ending was extremely abrupt...though it reads better than it was staged. I feel that was perhaps the one weakness of Mantello's staging...he really works wonders with that Stage.

I saw this the first night of previews. Although when I left the theatre that night I was somewhat confused by what I had just seen on stage in front of me. But I was extreamly intrigued by it. I enjoyed it but can see how some people wouldn't care for it.

I too would like to see how the changes have helped it.

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A mostly positive review from Linda Winer, who raves for the cast and feels the play is too short.

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/stage/ny-ettop5438111oct31,0,999304.story

"And since Beverly is embodied by the wonderful Jayne Houdyshell, theatrical master of the dumpy midlife Everywoman, we sit back and luxuriate in the details with which she transforms ordinary tasks of daily life into giddy suspense.

So we wait. And we watch. And the banal interactions are so entertaining in Joe Mantello's visually minimalist, emotionally generous production that, for a while, we almost forget that this 70-minute amusement began with a mysterious and disturbing monologue.

Kendra Kassebaum is a wonder of contradictory squirmy impulses as Lorraine, the sort of adorably insecure and confident sex kitten that used to be played by Barbara Harris. Josh Charles has an appealing inscrutability as the visitor from the Central Office.

The set, by David Korins, makes the most out of the image of bookcases full of paper files. Jane Greenwood dresses the four characters with lovely touches of the mundane. But the play, which lasts a little more than an hour, feels curt and oddly stingy. Perhaps it is time to bring back the double bill."

Talkin Broadway is Mixed:

"Bock's play, despite being one of the classier denunciations of the Bush administration, doesn't withstand that kind of scrutiny, especially not as directed here by Joe Mantello. In the proper hands, this play could be a suspense-drenched deconstruction of the terror-inflicting schemes of those who fight terror. At MTC, those darker overtones are almost entirely absent, leaving Houdyshell and her three excellent castmates - Josh Charles, Robert Foxworth, and Kendra Kassebaum - the insurmountable task of constructing an entire dysfunctional world on their own.

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If the setup is obvious and the resolution just as much as so, the lack of surprises can't disguise the craft and elegance of Bock's treatment. It establishes in very little time - the play runs scarcely 70 minutes - a tightly knit American microcosm about to be unwound, at first wearing its disarming manner on its sleeve but quickly shedding it when the inconsequentialities become too serious to ignore. The disintegration of the ordered world, represented by the expert Beverly holding court at its nucleus, is handled so deftly that you're well in the midst of it before you're aware it's begun. Bock doesn't allow enough time to fully develop every idea, and the final 10 minutes drive the action to its easily foreseeable conclusion before the characters involved could have believably arrived there on their own, but the play is never for a minute boring.

It's also never terrifying, and it should be. The Receptionist is about the viral oppressiveness of suspicion, and how it consumes everyone associated with it, but Mantello never imparts the necessary sense that the people onstage are about to be eaten alive. He's paced the show from beginning to end as a hard-pushing comedy, rather than encouraging the gentle ebb and flow characteristic of any great nail-biter. Even the usually reliable set designer David Korins misses the mark, though in the opposite way: His office-adrift-in-the-void set is too eerie to be anything but a harbinger of doom, and never convincing as anything other than a place where Bad Things happen."



http://www.talkinbroadway.com/ob/10_30_07a.html

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Updated On: 10/30/07 at 08:07 PM

Theatremania is Positive:

"There's no gainsaying that by the time the denouement is reached and intensified by Korins' shifting walls and file stacks and Darron L. West's sound design, Bock's communique is effective. But the playwright is also glib. He makes his uncompromising statement in a piece that falls somewhere between Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" and a Twilight Zone episode -- with a soupcon of Franz Kafka thrown in. Some audiences will be content with that brand of message-inclined entertainment; others may feel that either they've been led manipulatively down a garden path to an unexpectedly thorny rose bush or they've been slightly short-changed.

There's no short-changing in the direction that Joe Mantello provides with the kind of deceptive lightness that Bock requires. The cast of four also impresses. In a role that brings to mind Roseanne Barr on a good day, Houdyshell can elicit laughs with the way she uses a letter-opener to go at an envelope. She has more stage business to contend with than Steve Jobs has iPhones, and she carries it out with a born comic actor's flair. Circulating around her, bouncy and brazen Kendra Kassebaum, smooth-talking Josh Charles, and confiding Robert Foxworthy render yeoman service."


http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/11943

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I had no idea the original play was an hour and a half. I would be curious to see what they decided to cut. The show I saw this past Sunday was very short, just a few minutes over an hour and now that I know some parts were cut, that explains some of the bewilderment that I felt at the end. The performances were top notch, I just think it needed something else to pull it together. Another example of the overrated Joe Mantello. I really don't see why people are ga ga over his direction. For me, it leaves alot to be desired.

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I really feel a director needs to put all pieces together to be considered a great director. There are too many times that Mantello does not do this. Your citing of the Odd Couple was one of them and this play is another example of it. While I enjoyed the Odd Couple revival, I agree with you that he kind of let auto pilot take over and was not the force he should have been. He does not always get the best from his performers. JMO, but I do think Assasins was his best work to date.

In the Receptionist, the cast was very good and gave some interesting performances, however I just feel something was missing and perhaps that's the way it was written. After hearing a large portion was cut, maybe that should be rethought. The story is intriguing and the cast is excellent, so I would hate for it to get bad reviews because with a little fine tuning, it could be a great play.

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haha about joan. i usher at mtc,and she came back yesterday and told our house manager that she'd fallen asleep and asked if she could sit in the back. oh joan.

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Updated On: 11/2/07 at 01:13 PM