Reviewed by G. Bruce Smith
The Odyssey Ensemble Theatre
Through Dec. 21
Bob’s Holiday Office Party has been a holiday fixture in Los Angeles since 1995 and is celebrating its 28th season (it missed two seasons during the Covid pandemic). Audiences and critics alike have been positively heady in praise for this over-the-top, raunchy comedy about a bunch of Neuterburg, Iowa rubes sinking into coarser and coarser behavior as Bob’s party progresses.
At the risk of being the Grinch at the party: I don’t get it. Nor did my friend who accompanied me to the theater. It’s not that we didn’t laugh occasionally, it’s just that, frankly, we didn’t find it very funny overall.
The action takes place at Bob Finhead’s E-Z Insurance office, which is decked out in tacky Christmas decorations, covering almost every square inch of the walls. Bob (Rob Elk, also co-author) has had his insurance business – handed down over the generations – for 30 years. But his true passion is inventing kooky items and is thinking of moving to the big city to attend the Des Moines Area Institute of Science and Invention.
Enter Elwin (Peter Breitmeyer), who was mercilessly bullied in school but as an adult moved to Des Moines and became a millionaire. He wants to buy Bob’s insurance business, ostensibly to create a community center for the small town, but, we learn later, he has darker intentions. He encourages Bob to pursue his dream of being an inventor, and Bob, tempted by the offer, says he will think it over. By the end of the play, we know his decision.
More and more of the town folk show up at Bob’s. To say the guests are colorful characters is an understatement. There is Sheriff Joe (Joe Keyes, also co-author), who has just joined Alcoholics Anonymous because he drinks too much beer but says drinking whiskey is fine. There are the Johnson sisters LaDonna (Judy Heneghan) and LaVoris (Johanna McKay), crude MAGA drunks who are successful farmers but whose behavior goes off the rails during the party. There’s Brandy (Sirena Irwin), a grotesque caricature of the town slut and lush. And more.
As the booze continues to flow, the antics go beyond outrageous. There are drunken attempts at sex, the pouring of alcohol down the throat of LaVoris through a funnel, cheese puff fights. You get the idea.
The lunacy of Office Party is enhanced by the gaudy Christmas outfits (costume design uncredited) and holiday-themed overly decorated scenic design (Amanda Knehans).
And the cast members, under the direction of Matt Roth, are clearly having fun as they shamelessly give new meaning to over-the-top.
The problem with this set-up is that it’s so outrageous, with most of its characters being nothing more than caricatures by design, this American Midwestern “Punch and Judy” show, for me, started to feel threadbare — outrageousness just for its own sake. It’s a bit like watching a broad, living cartoon. I found myself hungering for something more finely tuned, for some characters within the caricatures.
And if the authors’ intent was to create a satirical piece mocking Red State America, that didn’t add up for me either. Satire can be meant to be vicious, and this production accomplished that in multiple dimensions, but satire’s greater purpose is constructive social criticism. Yes, with their ineptitude and sadism, these characters are the people now running the country; however, I didn’t find the almost spitting South Park-style mockery of them to be heartening or constructive.
And yet.
Office Party has clearly made hundreds of people laugh heartily for three decades (though on opening night there was audience mirth but no rolling in the aisles). The outrageousness is the point, and lots of people apparently enjoy that.
And so it likely comes down to something of a truism: Comedy is subjective. As Todd Phillips, director and writer, says, “You could be in a room with 400 people laughing at a joke and you could just not think it’s funny.”
Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. Los Angeles. 8 pm Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 pm Sundays and 8 pm Thursday, Dec. 19. https://odysseytheatre.com/tickets/?eid=178211. Running time, One hour, 30 minutes, with no intermission.
