Anyone who’s ever worked in an office knows that when you hear that a colleague has “stopped following the protocol,” it doesn’t mean anything good. But the phrase takes on a more sinister meaning in The Receptionist, Adam Bock’s 2007 drama receiving an off-Broadway revival by Second Stage.
The playwright, who also dealt with the dehumanizing aspects of corporate life in his acclaimed drama The Thugs, went even further in the same direction with this brief, oblique work.
That the proceedings will not be lighthearted is signified by the opening monologue in which a man, whom we eventually learn to be Mr. Raymond, the office boss (Nael Nacer, Prayer for the French Republic), describes his aversion to hunting and his preference for fly fishing. He tells us that whenever possible he prefers to throw a caught fish back into the water and will only kill them if they’re too damaged to survive, describing his humane method of doing so. The significance of the scene only becomes apparent much later in the play.
The titular character, Beverly (two-time Tony winner Katie Finneran), is a gregarious receptionist busily working the phone at the nondescript “Northeast Office” of a company whose business isn’t specified. When she’s not engaging with what seems like a constant stream of callers, Beverly shoots the breeze, mostly about men, with her younger co-worker Lorraine (Mallori Johnson, soon to be seen in the film Is God Is).
When the well-dressed, friendly Martin Dart (Will Pullen Sweat), an executive from the “Central Office,” arrives unexpectedly, nothing seems amiss at first, except for the fact that the person he wants to see, Mr. Raymond, hasn’t yet come to work. While he’s waiting, he and Lorraine engage in playfully ebullient flirting, almost childlike in its silliness. But it soon becomes apparent that his visit has more menacing complications, and that this is no ordinary business. To reveal more would be too much of a spoiler for this slight work that depends on its significant tonal shift midway through the proceedings.
The Receptionist runs a mere 80 minutes, but it still feels protracted in this prosaic staging by Sarah Benson (Teeth, The Welkin). While the play’s themes feel more potent than ever in this ICE age, it nonetheless feels like ersatz Pinter, minus that master dramatist’s gifts for truly memorable characters and alternately amusing and disturbing dialogue.
Finneran, essaying the role played so memorably by Jayne Houdyshell in the original Manhattan Theater Club production, proves typically engaging, mining the play’s humor while subtly conveying that the chirpy Beverly knows more than she lets on. Her fellow performers handle their chores capably but are ultimately unable to give much depth to their underwritten characters.
Lacking the stylistic finesse to give depth to its surface banalities, The Receptionist mostly makes you feel as if you’ve been put on a lengthy hold.
The Receptionist opened May 7, 2026 at the Signature Center and runs through May 24. Tickets and information: 2st.com
