VADA Theatre's The Bug all laughs, no glitches

By Brian Reinhart     3/18/10 7:00pm

A computer bug leads four office employees on a search for a missing co-worker in The Bug, the Rice Visual and Dramatic Arts Department's spring play. The Bug may be modest in length, plot and ambition, but it delivers the laughs in a thoroughly enjoyable corporate comedy of errors.The Bug is a small-scale play; it is only an hour and a half long, and it consists of a single long scene in one room, with an intermission in the middle. There are only four characters, and the play follows their conversations over the course of a rather atypical morning at the Chicago offices of Jericho, Inc.

The protagonist, Dennis Post, is a sort of everyman, an assembly worker who wires the machines Jericho constructs. Dennis, played by fifth-year architecture student Adam Williams, is a modest, polite, conflict-avoidant man with disheveled hair and a mismatched suit. He is terrified that his job might be transferred to St. Louis but wants to avoid any trouble about it, so he qualifies his pleas with remarks like, "Not that I'm complaining!" Dennis only wants to be loved, and thanks to an endearing portrayal by Williams, we cannot help but oblige him.

In his quest to make sure his job is secure, Dennis tries to schedule a meeting with the CEO of Jericho. The production revolves around his attempt to get past his boss' three formidable secretaries, each of whom is more intimidating than the last. The secretaries, who barely talk to each other, hide their faces behind computer monitors to avoid human interaction.

---

---

Dennis attempts to charm the first barrier, a tall blonde secretary named Linda Taylor (Hanszen College senior Pam Zelnick), but mistakenly confesses that his immediate supervisor has not reported to work in three years. Upon hearing this, Linda decides she must get the other office workers involved to try to get to the bottom of the case of the missing supervisor.

It sounds like a fairly dull premise for a comedy, but The Bug really is very funny, and its hilarious characters drive the production forward. Brown College senior Caroline Turner excels as Kimberly Miles, the next step up the secretarial chain, who treats Dennis like a small child. Dennis, meanwhile, is amusing as he veers from hysterics to meek submission, often within the same sentence.

The Bug has an ace up its sleeve, too, in the person of David Rajeski (Hanszen sophomore Aaron Tallman), the most intimidating character: so scary, in fact, that he keeps a gun in his desk. Rajeski frankly admits to having no sense of humor, and he dreams that one day humans will work and act like robots. Tallman subtly walks, moves and gestures like a robot, a touch that suggests Mr. Rajeski means what he says.

The production is not lacking in acting talent: The quartet of actors is superb and has great chemistry, especially between Turner and Williams. This is fortunate, as they, not the plot, are the source of all the play's laughs. The tidy, professional set and lights evoke the minimalist office setting well, and director Julia Traber has done a marvelous job making sure the play's pace never lags.

The faults in the production, in fact, exist not with the play itself, but with playwright Richard Strand. Although the action of The Bug is hard to summarize in a review, it certainly is very funny up until the last ten minutes. The ending, however, is a disappointment. For some reason, the second act marginalizes the character of Kimberly, which might even be unnoticeable if Turner did not play the role so well. The script ends on an ominous, sour note, as if Strand were afraid his comedy was getting too funny.

Of course, there's a sort of intellectual humor to the unhumorous final scene. Throughout The Bug, Dennis' hysteria has been slowly treading into the realm of paranoia, and, in the last seconds, that paranoia finally manages to infect even the unflappable Mr. Rajeski. Maybe this irony is meant to be The Bug's final joke, but it is a strange, anticlimactic finale to a production that has generally featured fast-paced comedy.

Given its surprising ending, the play is saved only by the richly comic acting of Williams, Turner, Tallman and Zelnick. The Bug will likely be remembered for its warm comedy and strong production, not its bizarre ending.

---