GLORIA—A Play Focusing on the Die-namics of the Workplace.
Set among the presumptuous cubicle dwellers of a dysfunctional New York City magazine office in the 2010’s is GLORIA, featuring a riveting script by the thrilling Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (who has been labeled a MacArthur “genius”), and taut performances under the able direction of the award-winning Marya Mazor (“The World is Not Silent”).
Assembling a smart cast, Director Mazor applies cutting-edge wit to satirize five ruthlessly ambitious editorial assistants and a social outcast they make the butt of their jokes. The humor is dark and cruel, but terribly funny — until, it suddenly isn’t. At which point, the comedy jumps the rails and doesn’t get back on track — until it suddenly does.
You should understand straightaway that no Jacobs-Jenkins play (among them, “Appropriate” and “An Octoroon”) is an ordinary circumstance: He is a genre-provocateur who deals in the art of discomfort as others may do in bon mots. In GLORIA especially, he toys with audience expectation as a form of cultural drama in itself. If there’s anything truly virtuosic about GLORIA, it’s the way the author wrings emotion (or at least shivers) out of purely formal manipulations. Jacobs-Jenkins’s dialogue, always piquant, here sounds acutely observed, especially in delineating the petty thoughtlessness of people with a little power and the tangled petulance of those without it.
The play, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is presented in its OC Premiere at Chance Theater in Anaheim through October 20th, and deals with a dizzying array of issues – including racism, economic anxiety, millennial generational issues, changes in the publishing industry, toxic workplace culture, and social media — yet manages to also tell a compelling, character-driven story.
GLORIA opens in a small open office with desks, or cubicles, pushed closely together, immediately centering us on a harshly competitive workplace where editorial assistants gripe amusingly about the degradations of magazine work while mostly avoiding any. Each assistant, well educated, articulate, and dripping with schadenfreude, is realizing that their job is at a dead end, as far as they can go. Most don't get to work before 11 am.
Tragically insecure Dean (Will Martella), on the verge of turning 30 and going nowhere fast as a culture writer, comes in late to work with a nasty hangover. He’s the only one who showed up at the eponymous Gloria’s housewarming party the night before – and it was so bad that there was nothing to do but drink. As Dean tells it, “it was so awful — so so so awful — and sad.” Dean is the assistant to Nan, a senior editor, who at this stage is no more than a voice and blur behind frosted glass.
In sweeps Kendra (Audrey Forman), a sniping twentysomething who, though seemingly callous and shallow, also represents a kind of generational angst that the play squarely grapples with. She’s a fast-talking cynic ahead of the pack, and there appears to be no consequences for her extended coffee breaks at Starbucks. Besides, no one seems to be getting promoted. “Everyone in charge is pushing 60 and not going anywhere,” she spouts off to Dean and coworker Ani (Emma Laird), who is sweet, sincere and always punctual but just a little naïve. “They discovered New York when apartments were, like, a dollar…” then ruined publishing with their “martini lunches.”
While all this is going on, a dowdy Debbie Downer of a copy editor wanders repeatedly past their carrels in a cardigan sweater, clutching onto her shoulder bag. She attempts a few monosyllabic words with one or two of her colleagues, but stops midsentence, almost robotically, to stare blankly ahead for what seems like an eternity. She’s Gloria.
There’s a slightly dated look about the office décor (sets by Christopher Scott Murillo), phones and the desktop technology, as well as retro office clothes (provided by Adriana Lambarri - costumes). Even the trendy Starbucks order of a skim macchiato with extra foam will be supplanted in a later scene by an even trendier order of an almond milk cortado with four shots.
Collectively, the little fish swimming in this office pool are young and lazy, but feel supremely entitled to their bosses’ jobs. They watch one another with paranoid concentration, alert to the slightest sign that someone has scored points in the ferocious competition for position. All this is observed by intern Miles (Johnathan Middleton), an ivy-league graduate who’s on his last day, keeping his options open and who definitely knows how to butter up a boss.
The play’s first act is tightly-plotted and mostly a slanging match full of bickering, jibes, trash talk and four-letter words. Until we get to the end of it…Then suddenly, its full of suspense as our title character goes berserk and, well…creates a bloody mess. Director Mazor constructs the play so that its very platitude leaves you with no doubt that something extreme is going to happen. It’s like The Condé Nast Witch Project. Clues are laid that, in your dread, you can’t fail to pick up long before the characters do. But the violent act is only half the story.
Two more scenes follow up on its horror at two different removes: eight months and then “years later.” And though these scenes may seem a bit banal to some — the first takes place in a Starbucks, the second in the office of a TV production company — the banality is entirely changed, colorized, by the expectation that yes, the author is setting you up again. If you found the gore difficult, the rest of the play, however bloodless, is nevertheless just as galling. Not to say, however, there aren’t some extremely funny, creative moments.
There are also flashes of unaccustomed emotion.
At the heart of the Starbucks scene — which is otherwise a mildly satirical argument about who owns the rights to the tragedy — is a memory monologue, beautifully delivered by Branda Lock’s Nan as a former editor at the magazine, that takes you into realms of feeling unmitigated by archness. Ms. Lock nails her two opposing characters—Gloria, the downtrodden, tight as a spring office outcast, and Nan, a smug editor who makes your blood run cold with her sentimental egotism.
My compliments to an excellent cast, where all but Mr. Scilley is playing multiple roles. And all of the performances are bang on target. Spot on Emma Laird, as Ani, the 24-year old “pretty nerd” newbie, tries to please everyone. Ms. Laird also changes her demeanor and looks dramatically in two other roles, as Sasha and a very funny airhead Callie. Audrey Forman’s Kendra, the annoying fashionista, is a phenomenon: a nasty motormouth and consciously ruthless. Her morning shopping and trips to Starbuck’s leave no time for actual work. In a crescendo of insults, Dean rebuffs her: “Kendra, you’re a rich Asian girl from Pasadena with a degree from Harvard. That is essentially a privileged straight white man.”
Johnathan Middleton excels in all three of his roles: from a calculatedly laid-back intern in Act I to gormless barista to frenetic trendoid, while Will Martella puts his good looks and charisma on hold to give us the pathetic Dean, who probably survived the office tragedy because he attended Gloria’s party, and then becomes an unrecognizable fellow in Act II.
So what really is the main object of their outrage? “It’s the Boomers” shouts an undaunted Kendra, staring down an issue-laden Dean while continuing to rail against those who spent their whole careers partying around the office martini cart, fiddling with their pencils, and wallowing in the gravy of print advertising, while the internet took off without them, leaving no room for the new generation. “Now everything is constipated!”
No…not really a fun place to work. But that’s why Gloria is there, to sort things out.
CHANCE THEATER @ Bette Aitken theater arts Center PRESENTS, THE OC PREMIERE OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST, GLORIA, by BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS. Directed by Marya Mazor; Scenic Designed by Christopher Scott Murillo; Costume Designed by Adriana Lambarri; Lighting Designed by Andrea Heilman; Sound Designed by Eric Backus. Stage Manager Jordan Jones; Dramaturg Jocelyn L. Buckner; Fight Director Martin Noyes; Casting Director Lindsay Brooks; Assistant Stage Manager Jordyn Nieblas-Galvan.
CAST: Branda Lock as Gloria/Nan; Emma Laird as Ani/Sasha/Callie; Audrey Forman as Kendra/Jenna; Will Martella as Dean/Devin; Johnathan Middleton as Miles/Shawn/Rashaad; Erik Scilley as Lorin.
GLORIA will run through Sunday, October 20th at 2pm at Chance Theater. Approximately two hours, plus one 15-minute intermission. Performances are Fridays at 8 pm; Saturdays are 3 pm and 8 pm; Sundays 3 pm. Tickets can be purchased at www.chancetheater.com or by calling the Box Office at 949-346-2374.
Chris Daniels
Arts & Entertainment Reviewer
The Show Report
Photo Credits by Doug Catiller
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