Saturday, March 3, 2018

Broadway's LOBBY HERO Stars Chris Evans (Captain America) but It Didn't Win Me Over

LOBBY HERO is a 2nd Stage Production playing at the newly refurbished Helen Hayes Theater.  Playwright Kenneth Lonergan is an Acad. Award nominated dir/screenwriter ("Manchester by the Sea").  Lonergan (b Amer 1962) is also an acclaimed playwright.  His previous play "The Waverly Gallery" was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.  His last play on Broadway "This is Our Youth" was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.  LOBBY HERO, Lonergan's newest play is about to open on B'wy and already garnered a Drama Desk & Olivier Award for Best Play.  For all the play's strength's it has several Achilles heels.  It centers round a revolving set of the inside to a humdrum NYC lobby.  Jeff (a miscast Michael Cera) is the omnipresent lackey "security guard".  Cera was cast in "This is Our Youth".  He is type cast as the milk toast, spineless and grating young person for whom we're expected to sympathize.  However, Cera's portrayal has grown old & stale.  Admittedly, he's also the source of levity to this social drama/comedy that is battered roughly between prescient social issues & injustices which diminish the strengths of its scathing commentaries.  Jeff is seated behind the lobby desk when William his supervisor (an extraordinary Brian Tyree Henry "Atlanta") & "Captain" to several other buildings' guards comes in to check on him and really lays into him what a lousy job he's doing.  William's harsh criticism softens as Jeff's abject & self-deprecating manner seem to quell his anger.  The other 2 cast members are officers; the veteran Bill (a flawless Chirs Evans "Captain America") and a rookie female cop, Dawn (Bel Powley "Arcadia").   Jeff's hapless, pathetic life becomes paltry in comparison to the complications, litigations & moral dilemmas that soon overpower the other three characters.  Jeff fell far from grace from the glory of his war hero father after his dishonorable discharge for smoking pot while on guard duty.  "Everyone does it I was the unlucky one to get caught" bemoans Jeff.  The lives of the officers shed light on police offenses that are covered up by their fellow officers.  William, is a black man who pontificated to Jeff to pull one's self up by maintaining a hardworking, honest life.  Laws begin to bend and familial loyalties prove sovereign.  Lonergan's brilliant writing becomes convoluted and off-balanced at times.   He's written absorbing characters whose double-talk gets themselves busted.  Jeff's feeble persona draws a line in the sand "I take it. But there's a limit."  The other 3 self-righteous characters' hypocritical hearsay, says a lot about social injustice, harassment & abuse of authority.   Basically this amusing play seems to say:  lie and deny.  I'd claim LOBBY HERO a Tony worthy play, but that would be a lie.  

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