Playwright: Joel Drake Johnson. At: Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, 5779 N. Ridge Ave. Tickets: 773-334-7728; www.rivendelltheatre.org; $30 . Runs through: Feb. 15
Some playwrights shun agendas. They don't tell a story or teach a lesson, but simply lock a few characters into a room, assign them a premise, and record the results. Actors and directors love this kind of play, because it allows them to analyze the text at great length before imposing their individual interpretations thereupon. Audiences, too, are enamored of the ( comfortably brief ) post-show discussions generated thereby.
Joel Drake Johnson's room is the reception area of a clinic, where Ileen Van Meter has been given a raise and promoted to "manager" of the two-person office after eight years of mothering her smug employer and his needy clients. Her co-worker of six months, Jaclyn Spaulding, carries out their assigned duties capably, but comes up short on the warm-and-cuddlies, and so Dr. Williams wants her replacedindeed, has already picked a candidate for the soon-to-be vacated post. Ah, but since Jaclyn is African-American, her exit must be carefully orchestrated, and so ( white ) Ileen is instructed by her ( white ) boss to findor even fabricatejustification for dismissal. The approval-seeking Ileen tries to comply, but gradually falls prey to conflicting loyaltiesa dilemma not shared by Jaclyn, who refuses to leave without a fight.
Are we to view this as a cynical diatribe on the tolerance of dishonesty ( which the doctor himself prescribes ) in corporate-medical circles? A guide to occupational survival through slimeball machinations, a la David Mamet? Is it a history of minority-group upward mobility, and will Jaclyn's trashy Latino neighbors someday adopt her tactics to their own advantage? Is it a misogynistic snicker at catty competitive women, with old-school Ileen nudged out by ambitious Jaclyn, or a diatribe on infantile male authority figures? Or is it a parable of epiphany, as Jaclynhaving endured the humiliation of being branded a "Rasheeda" ( the current epithet for a low-level, service-sector, working woman of color )comes to accept a display of affability as the price of escape from the copy-center ghetto?
Rivendell director Sandy Shinner and a cast led by Tara Mallen and Ora Jones as the warring desk-dwellers, flanked by Eric Slater and Lorraine Freund, delve the intricacies of their superficially recognizable, but ultimately indistinct, personae for the 90 minutes before Johnson runs out of questions he raises, but never answers. The show's publicity conveniently identifies its theme as "post-racial America," howevera topic always good for convening a quick symposium before everyone goes home.