Office Sonata Martin Denton December 10, 2005

OFFICE SONATA, a hilarious and inventive new comedy by Andy Chmelko, deserves to be this season's sleeper hit. Alas, it only runs two more days; maybe it will come back. Boy, am I glad I got to see it!

Deliciously surreal yet rooted just enough in the world of corporate life that office workers know and love (to hate), Office Sonata is a funny, sharply-observed, shrewdly grounded satire of American nine-to-five culture. It revolves around Martin and Kyle, two underlings in the awesomely massive Empie Advertising Agency. Martin is a slacker with attitude: when he accidentally substitutes a porno tape about barnyard animals and she-males for a client presentation, he is punished—in Empie's unorthodox style—by being "fingered" (i.e., a silent, somewhat scary man in a raincoat and obviously false moustache hovers over his desk all day, middle finger extended right in front of his face). But when Martin 'fesses up to his next screw-up—a HUGE one, whereby he crashes all of the company's computers by visiting a porn site on the Internet—he is rewarded for his courage with a big promotion. Empie, with the lack of consistency, internal logic, or common sense that we know in our hearts pervades all monolithic money-making institutions these days, has its own unique way of managing, well, just about anything.

Kyle, on the other hand, is plodding and striving, starting at the bottom with a plan to do the jobs no one else wants to do so well that he will surely be noticed by upper management. Guess how fast he gets promoted?

He does wind up saddled with a hellacious boss named Marisa who, in one of the play's funniest sequences, locks horns with another executive, Les, because he won't move out of her way and she won't move out of his. (This, Chmelko tells us, is called "Zax Complex"—an affliction affecting the rich and powerful.) Eventually Kyle, along with Les's assistant Megan, declares a revolution against their arrogant fathead bosses, tossing lo mein noodles and Zima at them until a team of "Separation Specialists" turn up, armed with tranquilizer darts, to end the stalemate. It's belly-laugh funny; it also feels like only a slight exaggeration of what actually transpires in Corporate America (or, perhaps more accurately, of what Corporate America seems to do to its unwitting inhabitants), which means it's as outrageously tragic as it is outrageously silly. Director Jason Zimbler sums up the play's moral in a succinct program note: "If you work for an asshole, quit."

The writing is superb; the production matches Chmelko's invention and wit note for note. Zimbler's staging deftly combines a variety of subplots, juggling them before our eyes as nimbly as any Flying Karamazov Brother (and providing the same level of breathless but sophisticated anarchy as well). The production design is of the same broadly comic style as the writing and direction, featuring a sublimely witty visual joke (a set piece in the upstage left corner) that you won't get until Chmelko's script delivers its most delicious payoff, near the very end of the show. Qui Nguyen's fight choreography, notably for the bitch-slap confrontation between giant cowards Marissa and Les, is terrific.

Seven remarkably versatile actors portray all of the roles in Office Sonata—I was sure there had to be more of them, so quickly and completely do they morph from character to character. First among equals are Bryce T. Gill as Martin (who gets some particularly nifty audience interaction to play with) and Justin Swain, who is hangdog personified as sweet, naive Kyle and quite the opposite as a web porn site brought to life in one of the play's most imaginative sequences. DH Johnson plays the sadistic executive Les as well as a lowly mailroom clerk named Vance who gets some of the show's funniest business and perhaps its most hilarious line. Beth Jastroch and Brendan Bradley play, among other roles, a pair of prisoners in a mysterious cell who fall in love with each other. Rounding out the ensemble are Heidi Niedermeyer as Megan and Rose O'Hara as Type A Business Lady from Hell, Marisa.

Office Sonata is only the second full-scale production from Impetuous Theater Group, a new troupe headed by James David Jackson, Josh Sherman, and Joe Powell (their debut was VENEZUELA, which nytheatre.com covered in last summer's FringeNYC festival). This is a company that we will definitely be keeping an eye on. Meanwhile, if you can get to one of the remaining performances of this really impressive show, do so—you'll have a ball.