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<b>by Kenneth Lonergan, directed by David Ferry
Pilot Projects Theatre Company, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, Toronto
May 29-June 14, 2003
</b>
Should you deny what you know is true when it comes in conflict with friendship or group loyalty? That's the question all four characters of Kenneth Lonergan's <i>Lobby Hero</i> must confront in a play containing equal amounts of hilarity and suspense. Kudos to Pilot Project Theatre Company for giving this Canadian premiere such a fine production.
The play involves two pairs of people in uniform whose job it is to protect. The lives of two security guards--a wiseguy loser Jeff (Paul Eves) who mans the desk in a high-rise apartment building and his straight-arrow African-American superior William (Dwight Ireland)--become entwined with two policemen--Bill (Paulino Nunes), a married, decorated veteran officer inured to deceit, and Dawn (Joanne Marrella), the idealistic female rookie officer he's sleeping with. Ethical questions arise when William's criminal brother asks him to supply a false alibi and when Dawn discovers Bill is regularly bonking a "classy lady" in Jeff's building. Director David Ferry gives this pre-9/11 play a brilliant post-9/11 spin by having William and Bill sport American flag pins, thus lending the characters' personal conflicts between loyalty and truth an inescapable political dimension.
Lonergan, best known for his hit indie flick <i>You Can Count On Me</i> and for his screenplay to <i>The Gangs of New York</i>, has given the play a taut, logical structure and dialogue so true to life it involves overlapping speeches. The trick for a director is to integrate the show's abundant comedy with its realism. Despite Ken Watkins' handsome hyperrealist set, David Ferry does not fully succeed in this mostly because Eves delivers his lines in the self-conscious manner of sitcoms that doesn't suit the schlemiel Jeff is supposedly to be and clashes with the naturalistic style of the other three actors. While Ireland could muster more intensity as William, Nunes and Marrella both create strikingly detailed portraits.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2003-06-05.
Photo: Paulino Nunes and Joanne Marrella. ©2003 Pilot Projects Theatre Company.
<b>2003-06-05</b>
<b>Lobby Hero</b>