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A review of J. Augusts's 'Lobby Hero'
J. August Richards is currently performing on stage in San Diego. Here's a review of the play and performances. |
 Rubbing my face into the stinking mess of a moral dilemma is an honorable job for a playwright but must the characters be so human and so eloquent as Kenneth Lonergan’s quartet in “Lobby Hero”?
And must they be brought to such poignant, heart-wrenching life as director Kirsten Brandt has led the Globe’s talented cast on the Cassius Carter Center Stage, a vivid reality that had seasoned first-nighters pounding the arms of their seats in sympathetic anguish?
Obviously, yes, if a management can assemble sufficient talent to work at the required level. And that, please believe me, is what’s happening at the Globe with this relatively unheralded new play, its four stalwart heart-breakers and its sublimely sensitive young director.
This is a slice of Manhattan life set during the graveyard shift in the lobby of a West Side apartment building. The duty security guard, whose main job is staying awake, is a likeable loser seeking room to make his life less unpromising. He’s won a certain scornful regard from his boss, a solemn seeker of responsibility over-convinced that neatness counts.
Except, his feckless brother having been arrested for a brutal, senseless crime, the boss must face a choice between the cold, bleak truth and a chance to save his kin from a justice system bent on revenge. And he needs somebody to talk with.
The cop on the beat is a strutting rooster of righteousness, infected with the dangerous cancer of omnipotence that ruins so many mid-career cops. He also is mentoring a cute rookie whose girlish adoration goads him to new poses of cynical excess.
The pecking order here is all too clear, but the talkative nebbish on the bottom rung just won’t remember his place so, eventually, the truth will out, hurting everybody. How badly, the author doesn’t bother to show; there are possibilities also of redemption, as the night pushes on to dawn.
These are all young, unformed persons, facing the painful tyranny of truth armed with little more than a bruised idealism and a determination to hang on until reality solidifies.
Mark Espinosa plays the senior cop like a moral juggler trying to add one more ball, with a self-confidence as sickly-sweet as poison gas. J. August Richards makes the head guard into a sweet soul staggered by the clash of responsibilities. Lauren Lovett offers a tyro policewoman armed with decency but distracted by idealism.
As he to whom all this happens, Nick Cordileone wrings out every layer of humanity in the title role and a couple more I didn’t see coming. The guy is a mess, true, but he’s got a growing ability to see himself for real and a natural empathy for almost everybody. Cordileone specializes in the definitive statement followed, a couple of beats later, by the hopeless undercut.
But, as Brendan Behan said, every cripple has his own way of walking, and that is Kirsten Brandt’s triumph. Using the riches of Lonergan’s writing, she helped each of these excellent actors find their way of walking and even showed them a couple of dance steps.
Terrific accuracy in costuming by Mary Larson, a fully convincing set by Nick Fouch, lit with subtle portent by David Lee Cuthbert... Hey, this begins to sound like many a line-up from the golden days of Brandt’s artistic directorship at Sledgehammer Theatre.
Yet another reason to celebrate the Globe’s cleverness in putting together this superior, very worthwhile package.
| | [by Dana (sandiego.com) ] [0 comments]
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