Bess Wohl’s 2014 play is sure to evoke comparisons to Annie Baker’s The Flick, for those who’ve seen both: Each features a trio of coworkers at the bottom of the customer-service totem pole who become unlikely allies, for a time, through the course of their menial work. Wohl, though, doesn’t seem to have Baker’s inherent empathy for her characters and their job—in this case, running a new franchise of a fast-food chain somewhere on the Subway-Quiznos-Blimpie spectrum.
The three employees—struggling single mom Jamie (Annie Prichard), downsized corporate type Ted (Chris Daley) and teenage Sheri (Saraí Rodriguez)—are not exactly set up for success at the play’s start by franchisee Bob (Brian McKnight), an immigrant of unknown origin who says he was a doctor in his home country. (McKnight gives Bob a wandering dialect and mustache that recall Tim Conway’s Mr. Tudball from The Carol Burnett Show.) But Bob’s employees soon realize he’s abandoned them, and with their bills going unpaid, their vendors won’t send more supplies. Sheri, Jamie and Ted must resort to their own devices to keep the doors open. (The premise resembles a real-life Quiznos case reported in Seattle.)
Wohl provides each of her three characters with a motivation to care about keeping those doors open, even as it becomes clear than neither Bob nor the unreachable corporate HQ nor their increasingly irate customers can sympathize. Yet I’m not convinced Wohl does, either. It’s one thing to satirize a corporate culture so regimented it divides sandwich-artistry into the three distinct stations of “baser,” “finisher” and “wrapper.” It’s another to make fun of workers so desperate for a system to cling to that they’d take purchasing and payroll into their own hands. First Floor Theater’s cast goes a long way toward bridging the disconnect, though, particularly Rodriguez as the sleep-deprived Sheri, working two mall jobs to pay her dad’s medical bills. Cody Estle’s staging is a bit broad at its base, but it finishes strong and wraps up handsomely.
First Floor Theater at the Den Theatre. By Bess Wohl. Directed by Cody Estle. With Chris Daley, Brian McKnight, Annie Prichard, Saraí Rodriguez. Running time: 1hr 25mins; no intermission.