Poltergeists and other site-bound spirits are often summoned forth by an overabundance of suppressed emotional energy, neurological impulses associated therewith charging the surrounding atmosphere much as electricity charges a magnet (explaining why a confluence of psychokinetic activity is frequently found in households with children undergoing puberty). The malevolent presence manifesting itself in Adam Bock's creepy little thriller, however, has chosen for its haunt a 16-story corporate high-rise, where it feeds off the anxiety of clerical workers reduced to infantile passivity by the pressures of urban life as we know it today.
We recognize the personnel from innumerable workplace comedies: the strait-laced supervisor, the toadying workaholic, the mischief-maker, the philosophical observer, the timid young ingenue, the mousy old lady whom everyone ignores (portrayed by Caroline Dodge Lotta, done up to look like the worried woman in the Roz Chast drawings) and the newbie who becomes a fresh audience for orientation to the status quo. But gradually, we become aware of tensions beyond the normal group dynamic. Two tenants of the building have recently died under curious circumstances, promoting a rash of employee absences, and exacerbating the paranoia of the survivors, despite the struggle of office managers to stave off disorder.
Oh, we can scoff at our medieval ancestors and their propensity for seeing demons lurking in every dark corner, but as one insightful character notes, "It's hard being scared!" In a world riddled with reports and rumors of imminent destruction, the smallest coincidence takes on ominous portent, ancient rites assume renewed credibility and the sudden darkness engendered by a power failure during a thunderstorm (municipal fire codes in this unnamed city apparently not requiring emergency-exit lights) can reduce even the most skeptical rationalist to blind panic.
Nothing could be easier than to play this malaise for laughs - ho-ho-ho, look at these scaredy-cats - but director Joe Jahraus and the tightly integrated cast assembled for this Profiles Theatre production (running in repertory with Men Of Tortuga) instead embrace the author's icily somber exploration of a microcosmic society on the edge of breakdown, taking full advantage of their circumscribed space and our confinement therein. When Bock finally permits his helpless denizens a small remedy for their abject terror, they may be too bewildered to wholly understand its therapeutic purpose - but we do, and the magnitude of our relief reflects just how skillfully we have absorbed his cautionary lesson.
