The title is Jeff’s and it’s ironic. True, Jeff makes the one possibly courageous choice among four characters trying to step out of moral messes. He’s hardly traditionally heroic, though. He’s mostly the resentful son of a father known for one instance of heroism that Jeff could never live up to. Now maybe he has the chance.
Brendan Ragan almost gets sympathy as he shows a conflicted Jeff, after dismissal from the military, trying for a new life. Could he possibly make Dawn part of it?
He’s an apartment house security guard. She (Brittany Proia, aptly anxious and also conflicted) is a rookie cop on his beat. He doesn’t know she’s just used a hell of a lot of force that sent a crime suspect to hospital.
Hateful as Bill, the corrupt but popular cop Dawn just coupled with, Jacob Cooper never relinquishes arrogance. He wields such power in every confrontation that Bill will surely get away with lies, bombast, marital infidelity, sexual harassment, revenge. Why, he can routinely visit a prostitute while on duty!
Jeff’s superior, William, has the sole strictly inherited dilemma. He’s in a position to supply an alibi for his brother, one of three young toughs arrested for a horrendous drug robbery. It ended in multiple rape and the murder of a widowed mother of three.
Likeable Christopher Williams projects Captain William’s thoughtfulness and sense of fair play, while trying to maintain discipline at work. This black man, who made it to a post of middle-class respectability, knows how hard it is not to be stereotyped, how easy to be mistakenly accused of the worst. In a moment of confiding his dilemma to Jeff, William in effect passes it on to him. Here’s the chance for Jeff to be the “Lobby Hero” and perhaps one for Dawn too.
Lonergan’s play is often called a comedy, perhaps because there are funny bits, comic lines, a few jokes. I think that call’s a stretch -- like the amount of time it takes the characters (except, narrowly, Bill) to spell out their quandaries, misgivings, choices and justification for same. And this is after extended exposition of Jeff’s background and rationale for his present situation.
Director Brendan Fox has imparted to the student actors the necessary motivations to turn in their sterling performances. Still, I wish the choice of play had given more students such opportunities. (This is probably the teacher in me opining; I hope others in the Conservatory second year have as good roles this season.)
Because I much like designer Rick Cannon’s austere lobby, lit so the owners can get by on a small overhead, I wonder why the director breaks the realistic convention by having the actors mime use of a non-existent door to it. Outside the apron is lit in blue to represent the street (with an unused sign post off to one side), apparently with no sidewalk. Directorial cop-out.
Costumes seem approriate. The length of the production does not.
