Playwright: Kevin CrowleyAt: Athenaeum, 2936 N. Southport
Phone: (312) 902-1500; $13-$16
Runs through: Nov. 23
It doesn’t take a major stroke of creativity to come up with the United States Post Office as a place of simmering hostility and perhaps even psychosis. And it isn’t much a stretch to build a dark comedy around the premise of ‘going postal.’ Stretch or not, this is what Second City veteran and LA resident Kevin Crowley has opted to do. The real question is: can Crowley deliver when the premise is actually bordering on stale?
And the answer is probably not. Friday night’s final preview of the show demonstrated a need for some serious cutting and tightening. disgruntled employees (sic), in order to succeed, needs to be whipsmart, cutting quickly to the bone. This is dark, dark humor, poking fun at issues like murder, denial, love, and the American work ethic, or what remains of it in the bowels of the post office. But Crowley has chosen to go the easy route: are jokes about postal workers damaging and even destroying our mail all that fresh or original? Is having a sorting room full of civil servants that ‘can never be fired’ turn on each other in resentment and fear a new idea?
disgruntled employees focuses on Mr. Barcroft (Steve Emily) the hapless middle manager who presides over the sorting room and its collection of loonies, each loony in his own way. There’s the newly hired Lubbock Czar (James Foster), who, in spite of describing himself as a drifter and a loner and who may have been responsible for some frightening violence in the past, is welcomed aboard by Barcroft on the grounds of some rather fragile family connections. Alex (Nick Lewis) is the milquetoast worker, prone to tears and high-pitched startled deliveries, but who may harbor the most strength of them all (who would have guessed?). Valentine (Carrie Chantler), overweight and perky, is obsessed with cats and finding a man who will shore up her notion of wedded bliss and give her a baby. And last, we have Gus (Thomas Edson McElroy), a bundle of resentment and pique, who is a human time bomb, waiting to explode at the mere mention of yet another promotion that doesn’t bear his name.
Crowley’s story focuses mostly on the interactions of the workers, and shows how their relationships and conflicts are part of a downward spiral that will end in tragedy. Along the way, the good things about disgruntled employees shine: its crazy inner logic, its natural and individual dialogue peppered with invective that can be very funny, and its performances by an ensemble that bring their characters to cartoonish life.
If only disgruntled employees would have tried for a darker edge and comedy that bites rather than going for easy, obvious jokes, it might have been a winner. If only the show had stopped at its very dramatic, shocking, and logical climax, it might have left one with the feeling that something important had just occurred. Instead the playwright decided to go on for another five minutes finishing out a subplot that is just plain stupid and diluting what might have been a very powerful ending. disgruntled employees isn’t without promise, but it needs to be packaged better than this to really deliver.
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