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A girl within the viewers began grumbling round half-hour right into a current efficiency of “Staff Meal” at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan. “What is that this play about?” she hissed. A couple of uncomfortable seconds after she stood up and repeated her gripe for everybody to listen to, it was clear that she was a part of the present, which opened on Sunday.
The disgruntled viewers member, performed with relatable side-eye by Stephanie Berry, goes on to summarize the setup up to now: Two strangers buried behind their laptops, Ben (Greg Keller) and Mina (Susannah Flood), strike up a clumsy flirtation at an anodyne cafe. (“Singles within the metropolis? I’ve kinda seen it earlier than,” Berry’s heckler says.) They head to a restaurant the place, simply outdoors the kitchen, two veteran servers (Jess Barbagallo and Carmen M. Herlihy) are education a brand new waiter (Hampton Fluker) on his first day. (“Is this a play about eating places or the individuals who work there?” the heckler asks.)
She goes on to bemoan the frivolity of “rising writers” who hold “doodling on the partitions” because the world burns. “Take a stand! Inspire motion!” she pleads. She’s not alone in that sentiment.
Embedding self-conscious commentary in regards to the worthiness of a brand new play, as the author Abe Koogler does right here, is an more and more widespread trope. (Alexandra Tatarsky did it with unhinged gusto in “Sad Boys in Harpy Land,” introduced at this theater in November.) Blame it on the world being in flames, and the playwrights who can’t assist however discover.
But preemptively asking what the purpose is raises the expectation of a passable reply, or at the least one which responds to the provocation.
There is nobody else to object when Berry’s character does what she has simply harangued others for doing: relaying a little bit of autobiography — she’s a widow and onetime aspiring dancer — that has no apparent plot significance. Back on the restaurant, the chef, Christina (Erin Markey), unveils her personal stunning origins: a fantastical story of sophistication, alternative and reinvention.Koogler’s earlier performs — “Fulfillment Center” premiered Off Broadway in 2017, and “Kill Floor” in 2015 — arrange uneasy contrasts between wounded characters and their dystopian workplaces. “Staff Meal” is extra loosely constructed and absurdist. Though Ben and Mina finally forge an incidental unity, and the unnamed restaurant servers bond over trade experience, the dialogue is much less involved with human connection than with exploring the circumstances that typically necessitate it: proximity in public, collaboration on the job, sitting down in a theater.
The manufacturing, directed by Morgan Green, gathers an air of foreboding because it goes. The partitions of Jian Jung’s set shift with glacial heft, hemming the motion into tight corners or separating to recommend a looming void; scarlet lighting (by Masha Tsimring) and industrial sound (Tei Blow) do a lot of the heavy lifting to summon a shadowy and menacing ambiance.
As it seems that an apocalypse could also be underway, the characters hardly appear to note. Keller and Flood play Ben and Mina’s doomsday first date with a heat and unfazed naïveté, as their seasoned servers, Barbagallo and Herlihy, show an unwavering devotion to hospitality.
If these are gestures towards satirizing fashionable complacency, they lack the sting of power or shock. The play’s narrative parts — a meet-cute, a culinary cult of persona — are acquainted components soldered along with an inventiveness that doesn’t maintain. You can think about one other viewers skeptic getting as much as complain that even Armageddon has been carried out to loss of life.
“Someone, in some unspecified time in the future, should have established the principles,” Markey’s character says of how the restaurant is meant to work. That’s a wink on the play’s personal upending of narrative conventions; the problem is determining what to serve as a substitute.
Staff Meal
Through May 19 at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.
