For most of its 90 minutes, the biggest drama in Adam Bock's The Receptionist revolves around stolen pens and missed appointments. The little incidents of cubicle culture — missing the bus for work, fetching a croissant for a co-worker, gossiping on the phone — are played out as the title character, Beverly, holds sway over her kingdom of Post-it notes, voicemail, and copy machine toner (David Korins designed the sleekly impersonal set). It seems as if Bock wants to give us a terribly ordinary slice-of-lifer, à la the hit TV series The Office. But then the boss casually mentions the hideous nature of the service this nameless company performs, and events take a decidedly Kafkaesque turn.
Bock's ploy of luring us in with a banal sitcom only to slam us on the head with an editorializing club is too obvious. Beverly and her co-workers are so exaggeratedly ordinary that the turn into nightmare territory is hardly a surprise. Fortunately, Joe Mantello's ace staging and the insightful acting of the four-member cast — particularly Jayne Houdyshell as Beverly — keep us engaged. Houdyshell delivers a tour de force of the everyday, imperiously spraying her computer screen for dust, then nastily announcing when interrupted, "I was just starting work." She masterfully invests Beverly's pettiness with details and intensity. When a visitor borrows a valued pen, the way she laughingly says, "Now you give that back to me," contains a history of unreturned items and nursed grudges. For much of the play, she has the difficult task of playing one side of various phone conversations, skillfully creating the parties on the other end of the line. When her power is taken away in the scary but predictable ending, her look of terror is shattering.
Kendra Kassebaum makes the desperately lonely Lorraine appealing despite her cluelessness. Robert Foxworth invests the tiny role of the office supervisor with specificity. Josh Charles endows the mysterious man from the "central office" with deceptive charm.
Though strongly acted and directed, The Receptionist is basically a political cartoon illustrating how easily evil can creep into our lives. The message is valid, but the play is so slight that an interoffice memo would have the same impact.
Presented by Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center Stage I, 131 W. 55th St., NYC. Oct. 30-Dec. 16. Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; Wed., Sat., and Sun., 2 p.m. (212) 581-1212 or www.manhattantheatreclub.com. Casting by David Caparelliotis.