After producing two tough dramas -- Carolyn Gage's The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women and Eve Ensler's Necessary Targets - the three-year-old Women's Theater Project in South Florida went looking for a comedy and came up with Annie Weisman's Hold Please. Weisman has said she was moved to write the four-woman play by the Clinton-Lewinsky episode, which, to her, illustrates that the person with ostensible power may not hold all the cards. As director Genie Croft quotes Weisman in the program note: "Young women have a powerful trump card when they get into relationships with powerful men."
And so we have Hold Please, which is occasionally reminiscent of Bells are Ringing, "Nine to Five" and, in a second-act twist, perhaps the Tracy-Hepburn vehicle "Desk Set." This 2001 play doesn't hold together as well as any of those, but it has its moments - some of them, no doubt, thanks to the actresses.
The four characters emerge as types thrown together in a workplace the way real people are. This isn't necessarily the place for great friendships, though it may or may not breed the sharing of confidences. Agatha (played by Marjorie O'Neill-Butler) is the lifer determined to create "a purely professional" work environment." Grace (Merry Jo Pitasi) also has made a career of clerical work, but she has a family life outside the office. Both of them are old enough to remember their first go-round with lip gloss -- in the 1970s. Not even born then were Erika and Jessica, characters clearly inspired by Monica. Erika (played by Jennifer Gomez) is sleeping with a boss. Jessica (Tania Tesh) is a live wire who hasn't quite decided on a career - though she earnestly declares her intentions in a series of wildly changing goals. O'Neill-Butler is stuck with a long-disillusioned character who seems to speak in bullet points picked up from too many self-empowerment seminars. Pitasi manages a naturalness as the old hand who's seen it all, and Gomez does well enough with a character that comes off as generic. But Tesh exudes Jessica's enthusiams, sometimes with just a motion of her head while seated behind a desk fielding phone calls.
The set is simple: a microwave oven, refirigerator and tables for the office kitchen breaks; a pair of desks, each with a pair utilitarian rolling chairs (armless for the 20-somethings), and a couple of filing cabinets; and, accompanied by the taped sound of traffic, a curved bit of stone wall for the cigarette breaks outside. Costumes are appropriate to the characters, and - in a particularly nice touch - Jessica's second-act ensemble is color-coordinated to match her black eye.
