11:35:40 am 
Offices - Taking Care of Business (in Ethan Coen's Inimitable Way)
Categories: UncategorizedLast spring, the Atlantic Theater Company offered up Ethan Coen's Almost an Evening, a trio of short, darkly comedic plays, that proved to be a surprise hit. The show transferred to a run in a larger house. Now, Coen and Atlantic have reteamed with Offices, another triptych of short pieces, these all focused on the workplace. There's a good combination of intelligence, brevity and wit in this new piece, and one suspects that Coen may have hit on a grand formula for theater during the summer: sort of the theatergoers' equivalent to thoughtful summertime movie fare.
"Peer Review" starts off the show, which has been directed with economy by Neil Pepe, pleasantly and amusingly. In this piece, Elliot (Joey Slotnick) can't believe the write-up that he's gotten from his co-workers. He wanders from cubicle to cubicle and office to office (Riccardo Hernandez' revolving set allows this and the other two plays to shift effortlessly), berating the process and trying to convince his co-workers to join him in his protest against the system that he believes is analogous to East Germans spying on one another during the Cold War. His vociferousness falls on deaf ears, and ultimately, he's let go (F. Murray Abraham is a delight as his cold-blooded, no nonsense boss). Coen gives "Review" and his other pieces final twists that are worthy of O. Henry, and there are marvelous riffs on the nature of "sucking up" in the office place throughout this opener to "Offices."
The show's second play, "Homeland Security," transports theatergoers to D.C. where the guys in charge of keeping the nation safe are portrayed sort of like the Marx Brothers as filtered through the eyes of David Mamet. Government functionary Munro (John Bedford Lloyd) should be concentrating on the business at hand, but finds that things like the delivery of his lunch and the briefcase he's somehow misplaced are requiring his full attention. So too are things at home, like Louie (Daniel Abeles), the guy Munro's daughter Emma (Aya Cash) is dating. She's given him a key to the house, and in light of the missing briefcase, Munro fears that state secrets will be leaked. In this one, the crackling dialogue and Lloyd's perfectly calibrated performance – a mixture of dryness and emotional hyperbole – prove both hilarious and vaguely chilling.
Offices concludes with a curious glimpse into the nature of one's happiness with the world. It focuses on a bum (flamboyantly played by F. Murray Abraham) who finds himself in the thick of the corporate rat-race. Instead of concentrating on business, though, the bum prefers to regale his new colleagues with stories about a revolutionary sexual position that he perfected years ago. It's a surreal bit of storytelling that beguiles but never soars to the sorts of comic or satiric heights of the first two-thirds of this amiable theatrical triptych that's perfect for the warmer weather of summer.
---- Andy Propst
Offices plays at Atlantic Theater Company at the Linda Gross Theater (336 West 20th Street). Performances are Tuesday – Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2 and 8pm; and Sunday at 3 and 7pm. Tickets are $65.00 and can be purchased by calling 212-279-5200 or online at www.ticketcentral.com. Further information is available online at www.AtlanticTheater.org.
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