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Warning sign #723 that we’re headed into a recession: The Factory Theater—once the producer of plays in which grumpy, schlumpy Chicagoans sat in bars and waxed philosophical about women and pop-culture minutiae—stages a play in which fearful, tearful Chicagoans sit in a bar and argue about which one of their working-slob peers should get laid off next. In Heather Tyler’s new work, the employees of a Loop accounting firm lament that one of their brethren has just gotten pink-slipped by suits in a coast-based executive boardroom. When it’s revealed during an unhappy happy hour that another layoff is imminent, a corporate cockfight unfolds over who deserves to get the ax.
Although Martinez’s production can be distractingly shaky in its execution of crucial multimedia tricks—never the Factory’s forte—here’s the rare anticorporate play that offers more than just the vantage point of the disgruntled, unappreciated workers on the bottom rung (from which so many playwrights preach upward). Tyler’s interested in giving all her working stiffs a fair shake, from the no-nonsense female manager (authoritative but never-vilified Ruta James) to the moribund, middle-aged tool (swell sad-sack work from Chas Vrba) to the dim, loudmouthed phone girl (Missy Styles makes the most of her small role of trampy girl trying to make good). How credible her corporate-speak dialogue sounds to you will depend on how trained your ear is to the idioms of high-stakes money white-collar office politics (I wasn’t too distracted by it). But while there’s a tackiness to the production and a lame titular metaphor, Martinez’s direction of a hardworking cast, unlike office culture, never bores us.
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