Theatre in Review: The Memorandum
The Memorandum
L&S America
David Barbour
November 5, 2010
If humor is the most perishable of genres, satire often has a shelf life of a minute and a half. It's rare to find satire as timeless as The Memorandum, and it's too bad TACT's revival is as spotty as it is. Vaclav Havel's 1965 satire of sclerotic bureaucracies is, in its details, as hair-raisingly accurate as the day it was written. Havel may have been taking aim at his Communist neighbors, but the portrait he paints will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has worked in a large corporation.
It's all here -- the constantly changing standards, the shifting of responsibilities, the regulations seemingly designed to bring all action to a standstill -- and, worst of all, the forced friendliness. We start out in the office of Josef Gross, the managing director of a nameless company with a nameless function. Gross' life is undone when he picks up the object of the title, only to discover that it is written in some kind of gibberish. Well, not exactly: As he quickly learns, a directive has been issued that, from now on, all company communications will take place in a new language, Ptydepe, which is apparently so exquisitely shaded that it allows for no misunderstandings whatsoever.
Of course, that's if you can learn it. The most uproarious scenes inJenn Thompson's production occur when Mark Lear, the in-house Ptydepe expert, is conducting thoroughly impenetrable language lessons. Joel Leffert, who plays Lear, fatuously holds forth on his favorite subject, explaining the "principle of a 60% dissimilarity" (don't ask), or explaining why the Ptydepe word for "wombat" has 392 letters. Lefferts expounds hilariously, and at length, on how a simple interjection can have dozens of synonyms, each of them an impossible-to-remember construction. He is the sternest of taskmasters, too. "With a steadfast belief in Ptydepe, no one has been able to learn Ptydepe," he notes, in smug self-satisfaction. Thanks to Leffert, these scenes have the zing of a sketch from the heyday of Monty Python.
As it turns out, nobody in the corporation, except for Lear, has the faintest grasp of Ptydepe, a situation that sets off an endlessly complicated round of intrigues among the members of management. In the course of 24 hours, Gross is demoted, humiliated, fired, rehired as a flunky, and returned to his original position. Of course, for all the activity, nothing has happened, which is precisely Havel's point; the purpose of such organizations is self-perpetuation, which is why a revival of The Memorandum in Washington, DC suddenly seems like such a good idea.
Still, this kind of satire needs to be stylistically on point, and, outside of Leffert's scenes, Thompson's production lacks the requisite light touch. This may be a simple matter of bad luck. Simon Jones, originally cast as Gross, had to leave the production following a car accident; his replacement, James Prendergast, is a solid actor, but he lacks Jones' skill at conveying outraged dignity and bureaucratic hauteur. There's a certain lack of malice in his performance, and, as a result, too many of the scenes go slack.
There are amusing contributions, however, by Mark Alhadeff as Gross' slick, scheming deputy ("You don't expect us to fall on our faces when confronted with facts?"), Lynn Wright as an airhead secretary who spends the day working on her blonde bangs; and Kate Levy as the staff bombshell, a Lauren Bacall-ish sophisticate who addresses everyone as "doll." Nilanjana Bose is a charmer as the one sympathetic character, a secretary who tries to help Gross. Best of all is Jeffrey C. Hawkins in four different roles, especially as an entirely mute member of the managerial class -- his stares speak volumes -- and as an overly diligent student of Ptydepe.
Adrian W. Jones' set -- all stark white walls and red carpeting -- has a spotlessly sterile feel, and it adapts easily to each of the three offices called for in the script. Philip S. Rosenberg's lighting adds to the unsettlingly clinical feeling. David Toser's black and gray costumes may be a tad too chic for the setting -- I kept thinking the men should be in boxy, unflattering outfits suitable for paper pushers. Stephen Kunken's sound design makes witty use of elevator music, especially a recurring melody that sounds like an entry from the Eurovision Song Contest re-arranged for Muzak. Kunken also provided the amusing projections used as visual aids in the Pytdepe lessons.
Even in less than tip-top form, this is a rare chance to see a modern classic in a professional production. But I can't help feeling that Jones' presence would have given it a lot more snap, crackle, and pop; the last two or three scenes drag terribly. Still, if you've ever been lost in the maze of an allegedly sensible corporation or government agency with more than a handful of people in its employ, chance are that The Memorandum will seem all too real.