OFFICES theatre review

by DICK KEREKES
DramaWorks of Florida State College at Jacksonville presented a four performance run of Ethan Coen’s Offices in the Studio Theatre at the Wilson Center on South Campus on April 14-l7th.
If the playwright’s name sounds familiar to you, then you are probably a movie fan since Ethan Cohen is a partner with his brother Joel in the movie business and has been for the past 25 years. Some of their award winning films include Blood Simple, Fargo, Raising Arizona, O’ Borother Where Art Thou, No Country for Old Men, and most recently True Grit.
The three one act plays in Offices are Cohen’s second venture into playwriting. His first being something called “Almost an Evening”. If you are familiar with their movies you know they are noted for the unique and at time quirky approach to the films they have produced. Ethan Cohen’s plays followed this trend.
The three play lets were presented in 85 minutes without intermission.
The opening play, Peer Reviewv was the best of the three, or at least made the most sense to me. The setting was three offices (I will cover the set later), with the leading character Elliot (well acted by Steven Carter), upset about the annual evaluation he received from his co-employees. He roams from office to office ranting and raging against company policies to all the employees, whether or not they want to listen or not. He talks about brainwashing methods and how unfair they are. Elliot is not well received by any of his fellow workers, probably because he is loud and very very profane with an obscenity in every other word. Someone complained to management, he is called in and continues his rants with much the same language. He is fired and in the in final scene a couple of months later, the receptionist is reading the local newspaper and finds Elliot has written a successful book. End of play. Most of the laughs came from the sexual activates of the receptionist and male staff under the desk. The other actors in this act included, Pauleen Conde, Jaron Wallace, Traveon Olden, and Alice Fay.
The second selection Homeland Security had Bob Munro as the leading character and played by Thaddeus Walker. He is minor executive in a government dept concerned with classified documents. The main plot concerns his misplacing his briefcase somewhere, either at home or the office. At home he questions wife Emma (Holly Whittaker), his internet obsessed son Bobby (Josh Pierre) and his daughter. Munro is upset that his teen age daughter has given a key to their home to her boyfriend and he may have taken the briefcase. The wayward briefcase suddenly turns up on his desk. Suspicious of how it got there, he questions his secretary (Natalie Bogart) who does not have a key to his office. He wanders around the office, winds up falling out his window and dying from the fall. End of play right? No, a goofy investigator (Kelsey Clifford) shows up at his home to question his wife as to if or why he committed suicide.
A couple attempts at humor were attempted but not very successful with this particular audience. One concerned separating documents into stack to file, act on or shred, and it did not matter in which stack anything landed it. The other humor attempt had to do with ordering lunch; sorry I never did understand what this was about. Others in this cast included Thomas Nicks-McCaleb, Steven Pedigo, and Heather Mullins. If you notice I have not told you the names of the characters each played. Oh, they are in the program, but the playwright most of the time does not have anyone use a name when talking with each other, so it is impossible to figure who is who.
Struggle Session the final of the three plays, had two leading characters in my opinion. First a foul-mouthed former merchant marine who is now a bum begging quarters on the street corner. Played by Bo Lockwood, he was dressed like a hippy and sported a Rip Van Winkle type beard. He is hired at the firm by Beck (Nicholas Jones) a former fired employee who has been rehired by the # 1 boss Lury (Chloe Campbell). Another fired employee, Schilling (Norman McKenzie), departs the firm one to return at the end of the play, sporting a new Afro and joining the ranks of begging money. The hired bum dresses in a suit but proves to be a rather poor employment choice, always using profanity and going around discussing with co-workers a new sexual position he has discovered that gives extreme pleasure (He never went into detail, sorry about that). This play just sorted ended with Beck in his office. Others in this segment included Anthony Bido, Emily Perez and Natalie Bogart.
What stood out as exceptional in this evening of weird one acts, was the outstanding set build by the students in FSC’s Technical Theatre program, under the supervision of Set Designer Brendan King, Technical Director Johnny Pettegrew and Scene Shop Supervisor Robert Rupp. I doubt that the original at the Off-Broadway Atlantic Theatre could have been better. The costumes by the costumes by The Costume Crew were excellent, mostly business wear, like suits and ties but well co-ordinated. The acting under the Direction of Ken McCulough was very good as well especially considering the material the students had to work with.
Actually this particular piece worked well as an educational tool, since it has many parts available that presented a challenge to the students. It also had smaller roles for those who were just starting out in the field of acting.
I was rather wary of this play that debuted in 2009. In an internet search I could not find any productions other than the original and this even though Ethan Cohen is a well known name (but not in theatre). Cohen probably financed the production.(He could afford it.) If Steven Spielberg or any other well known movie producer wrote a play, you can be sure someone would produce it, regardless how good or bad the play was.
It was an interesting and certainly different evening of theatre and I always look forward to the unique and always stimulating productions of DramaWorks at FSC South Campus.