‘Lobby Hero’ @ Rover Dramawerks
—Jan Farrington
In Lobby Hero, everyone thinks they could do something—be someone—if only they could figure out the angles, make things happen, get out of their own way, and find the “higher up” who might give them a shove up the ladder.
Rover Dramawerks and director Carol M. Rice have pulled together a remarkably good cast for this play, giving Kenneth Lonergan’s sad-ass (and sadly funny) portrait of four humans in a high-rise Manhattan lobby plenty of power. Along the way, we start keeping count of the shaky, self-destructive, sometimes wackadoodle decisions these four make in ways large and small: from planning how to small-talk a girl—to agreeing to cover up a crime.
Unhappily, the same discount-store moral “compass” seems to be at work in each of them: bad at the little choices, even worse at the Big Ones.
At the center of it all is an unlikely “lobby hero” (in the end, will we hear it as truth or sarcasm?), security guard Jeff (Sinan Beskok). Fresh-faced and compulsively talkative, he’s a timid guy tossed out of the Navy for smoking weed, couch-surfing with his brother, wishing his Dad (a Navy hero) wouldn’t be quite so disappointed in him. He’s lonely, (the set, also by Carol Rice and lit by Kenneth Hall, gives off stone-cold emptiness), and he wants a girl. Like all little guys, he’s sassier when his boss isn’t around.
The boss is William (Emmanuel Turner), straight-arrow captain of the security force. (Don’t call them “doormen.”) He’s been working for the company since he was a teen—and hopes to move into management. A stickler on the rules (he made a lot of them), he’s after Jeff for not getting signatures from visitors, keeping the desk a mess, reading porn. Turner is upright and steely-eyed, king of this small hill. He tells Jeff to be ambitious like him—or he’ll wake up in the lobby someday with people calling him “Pops.”
William is particularly interested in knowing about visits from the police. Enter swaggering police veteran “Super Bill” (Nolan Spinks) and his wide-eyed rookie partner (name TBA), played by Savannah Lloyd. Spinks’ great-guy manner barely hides his bullying, manipulative presence. Why is he visiting here so often? What does he really think of his female partner—and how he might use her? Bill’s already involved in her business, but will weave himself into Jeff and William’s too.
Lonergan (Gangs of New York, You Can Count on Me, Manchester by the Sea) has a gift for packing ordinary speech with more life and humor than we’d expect, and it draws us in close. We care about what happens to this quartet of humans, for good or ill. We laugh at Jeff’s nerdy, oddball attempts to interest the young police rookie (okay, her name’s Dawn), and groan as he promises everyone to keep their secrets—then blurts them to the wrong-est people he can. But there’s something about him, a core of belief in truth-telling that makes us think twice about the guy.
William’s nervous air involves a brother’s troubles. Bill is cock-sure he’s on the way up in the NYPD—but turns mean and vindictive as all the balls he’s keeping in the air (and yes, that’s two sexual puns in one sentence) come crashing down. We’ve heard so much in the past 20 years about police misconduct and brutality, the “boy’s club” loyalty (and silence) of cops, and about workplace sexual harrassment in law enforcement and, well…all over.
None of it takes us by surprise, but we do get surprisingly invested—because we aren’t watching statistics, but flawed, mixed-up people, hell-bent on messing up their lives and futures. Sometimes they know what they’re up to, sometimes they don’t have a clue but keep right on going—especially Jeff, bless his heart.
Life is complicated. We know it, and they show it—and leave us looking, hoping for a glimmer of light. Rover Dramawerks does right by this play and its playwright—making us, as Lonergan intends, take a closer and more thoughtful look at the whole idea of “small” lives. Are there any?
WHEN: June 8-24, 2023
WHERE: @ the Cox Playhouse, 1517 H Avenue, Plano TX
WEB: roverdramawerks.com
