Gloria

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre
Extended through October 28 

RECOMMENDED

Although the publishing world serves as the framework for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ scathing dramedy, his story is less about the decimation of a once flourishing profession as it is about the impoverishment of our lives and our relationships with others, or lack thereof. In Jacobs-Jenkins’ telling, the good guys — that is, those who manifest a desire to care for and/or connect with other people — lose out to the small-minded mini-sharks ready and willing to exploit even tragic events for their own narcissistic gain. Though it’s a common theme, in art and, sadly, in life, the play eludes tiresomeness by virtue of smartly-etched characters, caustic dialogue and a single startling surprise.

The play is set in the Manhattan office of a prominent national magazine where a group of editorial assistants spending more time kvetching and putting each other down than they do actually working. The champion meanie is a 27-year-old Asian-American woman, Kendra (Jenny Soo), with an acid tongue that she uses to unsparingly annihilate the egos of any vulnerable person in her ken. Her chief target at the moment is her co-worker, Dean (Michael Sturgis), the 30-year-old personal assistant to an editor named Nan. Although Nan doesn’t appear on stage until Act II, we’re made privy to her presence early on when she becomes ill and summons Dean to retrieve a bag of vomit from her office, to the wry, ridiculing “ews” of his colleagues. These include Ani (Alana Dietze), who is nowhere near as nasty as Kendra but a chilly customer nonetheless, and Miles (Devere Rogers), a 20-year-old intern who cloisters himself under headphones most of the time except when Dean, his supervisor, demands that he run some inconsequential errand.

The topic of conversation at the top of the play is a party given the night before by Gloria (Jessica Goldapple), a middle-aged editor mocked and scorned by the younger set as weird and uncool. Dean, however, had attended the party, spending the entire evening with one or two other disconsolate guests — thus opening himself up to the disbelieving gibes of Ani and Kendra but earning a measure of redemption from us for his compassion for the scapegoated Gloria.

The other outsider in the mix is a 37-year-old fact-checker Lorin (Steven Strobel) who enters at intervals to patiently plead with the squabbling (and sometimes shrieking) group to pipe down — and who at the end of the day sums up the best we can hope for in an unkind, unjust universe.

Under Chris Fields’s direction, the ensemble works in well-oiled sync; the pace stays taut, except for lulls in the second act due in part to one too many extended monologues. The set (Amanda Knehans), sound (Christopher Moscatielo) and lighting (Azra King Abadi) are all unelaborate but effective. Designer Diane K. Graebner costumes the female characters with style. The play opens, per the playwright, with strains of Bach’s Mass in B-minor, which reverberate throughout— a deliciously ironic contrast to the characters’ petty concerns and ignoble machinations.

Kendra, described as a tigress by some in the office, including her supervisor, propels the first act with her vicious vilification of just about everyone and everything, mellowing only slightly in Act 2 before again going on the attack. It’s a super-duper juicy role that Soo hasn’t yet made the most of. Her Kendra is catty and mean and more fully fleshed than a caricature but there’s so much room to grow. Dietze is crisp and capable as the more restrained Ani and Rogers is on target as the easy-going Miles uncorrupted by the others’ ambition. As Gloria, Goldapple says little, but her silences and body language tell you everything you need to know.

The production is at its comic best when Sturgis is center stage as the neurotic Dean, with his aspirations to be a writer of note and his naïve generosity towards the belittled Gloria. The performer inhabits the role utterly, and he’s terrific to watch as he gamely fends off Kendra’s putdowns. Strobel also distinguishes himself as the backbiters’ low-key foil — an honest guy dwelling in the swamp because, like so many who work for a living, he has to.

Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.; Mon., 8 p.m.; extended through Oct. 28; 310-307-3753 or https://www.echotheatercompany.com/gloria/. Running time: two hours with an intermission.