Theatre in Review: Gloria (Vineyard Theatre)

	Ryan Spahn, Kyle Beltran. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Gloria is, quite possibly, the first play of real brilliance of this new season, and I'm not sure what I can tell you about it. The author, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, has constructed a bear trap of a play marked by a jaw-dropping first-act curtain and a second act that appears to wander off in many directions but in fact does nothing of the kind. Suffice to say that the pre-intermission shock twist is nothing compared to the ways in which Jacobs-Jenkins' characters use it for their own venal purposes.

The play begins in the office of a magazine that could be New York or The New Yorker, and Jacobs-Jenkins spends most of the first act hilariously establishing the editorial assistants' cubicle as one of the lower rungs of hell. Its frustrated occupants include the hard-drinking Dean, who is asked to step into his boss' office and remove the plastic bag into which she has just vomited, and Kendra, who is so ferociously entitled that she never shows up before 11am, and spends the rest of the day making Starbucks runs. They, and their office mate, Ani, are bored out of their skulls and see no way forward for themselves. Kendra bitterly recalls the golden age of publishing, when smoking, drinking, and adultery were the main activities, and "people actually died back then," allowing others to move forward with their careers.

Naturally, this void is filled with all sorts of malicious behavior. Kendra and Ani get their hands on Dean's book proposal, for a memoir titled Zine Dreams (a title that provides them with hours of fun), which seems to prove only that nothing of note has ever happened to him at all. Dean and Kendra take part in ferocious feuding: He feeds her false information about a cover story, focusing on a recently deceased pop star, causing her to make a fool of herself in front of her superiors. Kendra complains about the privileged-white-male structure that oppresses her; Dean responds that she is "a rich Asian girl from Pasadena with a degree from Harvard," which means that she "is essentially a privileged white man." When their fights reach a certain decibel level, in comes Lorin, the head fact-checker, demanding that they quiet down. But Lorin gets no respect from these twentysomethings; he is 37 and, by their lights, practically ready for assisted living. Still, he is royalty compared to the title character, from the copy department, who wanders in now and then, looking ready to burst into tears at any second. Each of these characters -- except for Gloria, who can barely speak -- is gifted with a riotous rant about the fallen state of publishing in the Intenet age. Evan Cabnet's direction gives all of those cynical, tart-tongued doings the snap and crackle of great screwball comedy.

Then something unspeakable happens, and the curtain closes, leaving the audience stunned and unsure what to expect next. In Act II, the action jumps ahead several months, then a couple of years, as Jacobs-Jenkins shows the effect that a terrible tragedy has on his characters, as long as they have memoirs to peddle or movie rights to sell. Two scenes that appear to wander in different directions are, in fact, cunningly constructed to reveal how brazenly they are jockeying for position in the publishing/media landscape. (Jacobs-Jenkins is especially smart about bringing people back together in surprising circumstances.) What is especially remarkable is how he strips his characters bare, revealing their sharp-elbows and self-aggrandizing natures, while also granting them their authentic pain.

Part of Cabnet's achievement is the production's first-class casting, with a nimble company of actors who each take on two or three roles. Ryan Spahn's Dean is a most amusing study in twentysomething despair, his mortification only multiplied when the others find out, via that book proposal, that he spent a couple of months in a Buddhist monastery. Spahn also turns up late in the play as the classic passive-aggressive IT guy found in virtually every office. Jennifer Kim, making her Off Broadway debut, cruises on Kendra's overcaffeinated talking jags, demolishing every reputation in sight, mostly as a way of taking her mind off her own problems. Another new face, Catherine Combs, underplays Ani with remarkable skill; she also scores in two other roles, as a book editor with an eye for what sells and as another gimlet-eyed office worker, this time on the West Coast. In a production filled with takedown monologues, Michael Crane's Lorin takes the prize for sheer unbridled fury. The indispensable Jeanine Serralles pulls off the evening's showiest double act, as the trembling title character and as the smoothest and subtlest of the second act's spotlight-seekers. The black actor Kyle Beltran is especially good in three roles -- an intern at the magazine, a barista, and a network executive -- each of whom hovers on the edges of the story. (Whether or not this is a veiled comment on race relations would be a rich subject for discussion.)

The rest of the production is equally accomplished. Takeshi Kata provides three sets, including two very different offices -- one in New York, one in LA -- and a wickedly accurate reproduction of a certain coffee chain. All three are skillfully lit by Matt Frey. Ilona Somogyi's costumes reveal plenty about the characters in a single glance. Matt Tierney's sound design makes especially good use of bits of baroque music, which always turns out to be the music coming from someone's headset in an effort to drown out the noise of the surrounding environment.

In plays such as Appropriate and An Octoroon, Jacobs-Jenkins has established himself as a writer with a gift for provocation and imaginative theatrical gambits. Gloria has all of that, and more. It is savagely funny, deeply upsetting, and, in its own way, profoundly compassionate. If he can keep this up, there's no telling what he can do. -- David Barbour