went in blind to The Receptionist last night and my brain is still buffering (also this Playbill has some nerve)
Knew basically nothing going in. No reviews, no synopsis, just showed up at the Pershing Square Signature Center and sat down. Genuinely think that's the only way to experience this one.
For the first stretch of the show I was just watching what felt like a really sharp office comedy. Katie Finneran is answering phones nonstop, cleaning up after her coworkers, gossiping, being the kind of aggressively competent person we've all worked with. Funny as hell. I was completely relaxed. And that's exactly the trap.
Because something starts to shift and you can't quite point to when it happened. By the time the stakes actually land you're already in it. I walked out of that theater doing the same blank stare I did after catching the first preview of Bug back in December. Both times I went in cold and both times I came out needing a minute to figure out what I actually just witnessed.
Bug is a whole different level obviously. It's a full two act wrecking ball and by the end you feel genuinely destroyed. The Receptionist is quieter, shorter, more of a slow needle under the skin. But they're pulling from the same place, that idea that ordinary people in ordinary situations are capable of just... not asking questions they really should be asking. Both shows make you weirdly implicated as an audience member and I didn't expect that from either of them.
The one thing I'll say is the script doesn't totally stick the landing. You keep waiting for the play to fully expose what's going on and it never quite does. Some people will love that ambiguity and some people will feel like they got shortchanged. I'm somewhere in the middle. But Finneran is so locked in that she carries you through even the moments where the writing leaves you hanging.
Oh and one more thing. Picked up the Playbill and flipped to the "How Many Have You Seen?" section. The Receptionist is sitting right there in the Broadway column next to Six, Wicked, Stranger Things, Two Strangers, etc. Off Broadway shows are clearly separated on the right side of the page. I noticed this same thing when I saw Rocky Horror a few weeks ago. But The Receptionist is very much an Off Broadway show at an Off Broadway house and apparently nobody told the Playbill ad team. Either that or Second Stage is putting it into the universe and I respect the confidence.
Go see it. Go in blind. Let Finneran's performance work on you. Just accept that you won't get everything tied up neatly at the end and you'll have a great time.