Theatre in Review: stop.reset (Signature Theatre Company)

	Ismael Cruz Cordóva. Photo: Joan Marcus

That our lives have been altered almost beyond recognition by the advent of digital technology is beyond a doubt; that Regina Taylor has anything to say about this phenomenon is not at all clear. In any case, she has written stop.reset, which purports to address this phenomenon but which gets utterly lost in oceans of verbiage.

We are in the office of Alexander Ames Chicago Black Book Publishers, a once-eminent firm that, like just about every business having to do with the printed word, has fallen on evil days. The firm is still nominally run by Alexander Ames, an elegant, graying intellectual, but he has sold out to a nameless, faceless conglomerate and, given the firm's financial underperformance, an order has been handed down from on high: Fire somebody. The staff is pretty lean already -- there's only one person each for editorial, marketing, production, and distribution -- but nevertheless, all are painfully aware that before the day is done one of them will be gone. In a play that veers between bald declaration and murky contemplations, the setup is delivered via some of the most inelegant exposition I have encountered in months. Taylor is satisfied to have all four characters blurt out what is obvious to them all -- Today is the day someone will be fired! Each of us must meet with the boss! --in order to bring us up to speed.

The first half of stop.reset consists of those interviews, in which each employee offers a lame, clichéd plan to use the Internet to boost sales. These scenes aren't bad; the flop sweat is palpable as each of them tries to dazzle Ames with their borrowed ideas. Taking part are Deb, who is fortyish and Asian-American; Jam, who is black, lesbian, and 59; Tim, a white guy in his early 50s; and Chris, who is black and the son of Ames' best friend. I mention these details because almost instantly after the lights come up, the characters start playing identity politics; in one scene, they keep reforming alliances -- white vs. black, older vs. younger -- in order to joust for position. Making the process even more agonizing is the fact that Ames is not himself; he has suffered a stroke and is still in mourning for his son, who was murdered in a senseless act of violence.

However, politics -- both office and ethnic -- are tabled when the play is hijacked by the janitor. That's right: His name is J, and when we first see him he is using a memory stick to steal data from one of the office computers. Ames begins to notice that as J goes about his duties he is talking to someone. Is he chatting to a friend on a Bluetooth? An iPhone? Nothing so mundane -- J is linked in to some kind of universal network that makes the Internet look like a back alley and which reminded me oddly of Emerson's concept of the Oversoul. He steals data to purchase more points, which land him on a more exalted place of this unnamed network. His membership in this organization is signaled by the weird necklace that he sports; he fashions one for Ames out of everyday objects, and soon the older man is zooming through the noosphere.

I realize I'm starting not to make sense, but you should talk to Regina Taylor about that. As far as I can tell, J, who is of mixed race, is an avatar of the future, when total interconnectedness will destroy conventional notions of the self, and categories like race, age, and gender will cease to have any meaning. Or something like that; it's hard to tell because, the longer J harangues a fascinated Ames, the less specific he gets and the more stop.reset becomes less a play and more a glorified Ted Talk. (J's speeches verge on the incomprehensible.) Then again, Taylor never met a symbol she didn't like: This is the kind of show in which the company is on the brink of destruction, people are terrified of losing their jobs, and a blockbuster blizzard is raging, but Ames takes the time to open a box full of his late son's things -- all of them old-technology objects like books, tapes, and records -- and assembles them to form the outline of a man. He then leaves it there for the others, to contemplate the meaning of it all.

Under such circumstances, and given nothing but the thinnest of stick figures to play, it's remarkable how effective the cast is. Michi Barall's Deb is convincingly rueful, the kind of woman who has finally faced the fact that she will not live up to her youthful aspirations; she has an especially effective moment when, in a panic, she announces that she will do anything to save her job, short of sleeping with Ames, then realizes with mortification that Ames isn't trying to seduce her. Teagle F. Bougere is effective as Chris, the slipperiest member of the team, whose protestations of innocence grow increasingly hollow. Donald Sage Mackay captures Tim's understated panic -- he's on his third marriage, to a much younger woman; however, he is forced to make a surprising gaffe -- trying to act like a homie in front of Ames -- which is totally unbelievable, given the fact that has worked there for decades. LaTanya Richardson Jackson is luxury casting for the role of Jan, who spends much of the play wandering the snowy Chicago streets in search of coffee, but she's always a pleasure to have around. Carl Lumbly, best known for his TV work, is exactly as imposing, and tormented, as Ames needs to be. Ismael Cruz Cordóva makes a notably strong impression as J, effectively creating a character who is tuned in to a wavelength few of us can imagine.

Neil Patel's office set, with computers at stage right and a wall of books at stage left, effectively embodies the conflict between new and old technologies that bedevils Taylor's characters. The set also acts as a surface for Shawn Sagady's projections, which take in texts by the likes of Ralph Ellison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and various black men and their children. All of these are well done, but the sheer cascade of imagery threatens to obliterate characters who already suffer from a certain lack of dimensionality; it's correct that video is a key part of the production but not to such an overwhelming degree. The other design contributions, including Lap Chi Chu's often surprisingly colorful lighting, Karen Perry's on-the-money costumes, and Robert Kaplowitz's mix of sound effects and cool jazz, are all thoroughly solid.

There probably is no more important topic than the way our lives have been reshaped by the assumptions of the technology now at our fingertips. And ambition is a beautiful thing in a playwright. But here, Taylor's reach exceeds her grasp, resulting in a play that fumbles both the basic techniques of storytelling and the larger task of communicating provocative ideas. I'm afraid that stop.reset needs a reset of its own.--David Barbour