Theatre in Review: Core Values (Ars Nova)

	Reed Birney, Susan Kelechi Watson. Photo: Ben Aron

If you've ever been on a company retreat, you're virtually certain to find plenty of hilarity in the first half of Core Values. Steven Levenson's play is set in a small Manhattan travel agency that largely caters to corporate clients -- which is why it has been on the skids since 2008. As one character notes, the annual company retreat was once routinely held in Miami, and, in more recent times, at the Hampton Inn down the street. This time, it will be in the office's meeting room.

Richard, the owner, comes on strong, ready to give his team a big infusion of pep. He begins by naming the event "Skyline Leisure Experts Retreat." The following exchange, with two of his top employees, sets the scene for the rest of what follows:

Todd: What's a leisure expert?

Richard: Uh. You are. We are. Is there confusion or ... ?

Nancy: I thought I was a travel agent.

Richard: Did you not get the email?

Nancy: I was pretty sure that was what it was called.

Richard: I sent an email about this last week. It was marked urgent.

Todd: I thought that was a joke when you sent that.

Nancy: What's wrong with "travel agent"?

Richard: There's nothing wrong with travel agent, it's just, this is a different, this is a more interesting way of saying the same thing.

Nancy: Oh that is so stupid, Richard.

Under Carolyn Cantor's exacting direction and handled by a cast of masters in the fine art of the throwaway line, this passage becomes an exercise in rapid-fire hilarity. Todd and Nancy are bewildered to see Eliot, the young lady who is joining their team, replacing the absent Tracy, who, Richard informs the room, has gone off to shoot a television pilot. "They don't care about her hand thing?" inquires Nancy, raising a palsied-looking fist.

Core Values continues on this merry way for some time, with Levenson's faultless ear capturing the absurdity of the motivational language used at such events. Richard announces that the theme of the event is "Selling." "Wasn't that the theme of last year's retreat?" asks Todd. "No, the theme of last year's retreat was 'Dreams'," says Richard, spelling it out as if to a small child. There is also a gag featuring one of the participants and an asthma inhaler that is a little masterpiece of precise timing. There are also uproarious role-playing exercises that short-circuit, thanks to the bad behavior of the participants, and a set of trust exercises that are reserved only for those with nerves of steel. "Lucas almost broke his femur the last time we did that," notes Todd, speaking of another employee who high-tailed it to Disney World as soon as the retreat was announced.

If this sort of satire was all that Core Values was after, it would be one of the brighter comedies to come our way this year. As it happens, Levenson deftly darkens the mood until his little group of office workers become a snapshot of Americans at sea in a directionless and recession-racked society. It soon becomes obvious that the company is in a terrible way, a situation exacerbated by Richard's messy divorce. There's plenty of upheaval on the horizon, too, including employee defections and money trouble. Desperation is evident everywhere -- in a phone call Richard makes to his children, trying to coax them out on a night that isn't allocated to him; in a getting-to-know-you talk by Eliot that bares the grim details of her job search; and in a desperate, wrong-headed lunge for affection that upsets the group's order once and for all.

All of this rendered in precise detail by a cast led by the great Reed Birney as Richard, his aggressively cheerful manner and can-do philosophy eroded, bit by bit, by the realities of personal and professional failure. Making an especially strong impression is Susan Kelechi Watson as Nancy, who never has to raise her voice to undermine one of Richard's points but who also creates a warm and troubled character beyond the wisecracks. Paul Thureen captures the titanic awkwardness of Todd, the IT guy, who thinks he can become a super-smooth salesman. And Erin Wilhelmi is perfectly poised to drive everyone a little bit nuts as the neophyte who is desperate to be liked, even while demonstrating that she hasn't a clue how to sell anything to anyone.

It all unfolds on Lauren Helpern's set, a perfectly realized copy of a dreary, featureless room decked out with such false notes of cheer as umbrella straws in the water bottles. Traci Klainer Polimeni's lighting captures the depressing effect of average fluorescent lighting; she also cunningly uses an array of little track units to create a more nuanced theatrical look. Emily Rebholz's costumes fit each character perfectly, especially the outfit Eliot chooses for her first, overdressed appearance at the retreat. M. L. Dogg's sound design fills the many transitions with a variety of bouncy musical selections that comment ironically on the slow-motion disaster unfolding on stage.

With its cast of sad sacks making conversation at cross purposes, and an aura of failure coming in like an especially thick fog, Core Values can be described as being of the school of Annie Baker. But Levenson's sense of humor is distinctively his own, as are his characters, who live in a world far from the small-town New England that Baker favors. He also occasionally lets his characters make speeches ("We don't really make stuff anymore, do we?" says Richard. "We make sales," says Eliot.) Most of the time, however, he's an expert at showing rather than telling. Core Values provides ample evidence that Levenson is a playwright to remember.--David Barbour