Office Hours
cast list
Holly Chou, Louiza Collins, Tommy Crawford, Bjorn DuPaty, Katherine Folk-Sullivan, Andy Gershenzon, Raúl Sigmund Julia, Betsy Lippitt, Maren Langdon, Turna Mete, John Russo and Wilton Yeung
directed by
Jim Simpson
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If A.R. Gurney's new play Office Hours occasionally feels slight, what it lacks in substance it makes up for in droves of charm and style. As performed at the Flea by their resident company, the Bats, under the direction of Jim Simpson, Gurney's lively exploration of an introductory literature course at a college in the 1970s, pitting students against teachers - and teachers against teachers - in a battle of intellectual wills.
Gurney's play is structured to mirror that of a college course. Each vignette (there's little in the way of plot) corresponds with one month on the syllabus of a lit course. As the year progresses, the course is called into question by students who feel their college education should take a more relevant, career-minded course rather than lingering on the classics.
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Office Hours is essentially an homage to the teachers in each of our pasts (well, most of ours) who have made a difference by teaching us about literature we never thought we'd care about. Whether it be Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Thucydides, or Homer, universal themes, Gurney tells us, and the immortal contents of books, trump their bland exteriors nine times out of ten.
Unfortunately, the odds don't quite stack up for the professors at the university in question. By the end of the play (and the school year) things look grim, and there's little consolation to be found in the wreckage (the preparations for a used book sale).
The play, which has at its heart a streak of pessimism, is nonetheless full of small human conflicts. Two alternating casts of eager young Bats take one each of the student and teacher roles. Each actor plays at least one student and one teacher. I had the pleasure of seeing the "Homer company" perform the play, standouts from which included the handsome Andy Gershenzon, prim-and-proper Katherine Folk-Sullivan, and Tommy Crawford, who has the task of taking on two of the most complex characters in the piece, a young gay man coming into his sexuality and a troubled Vietnam vet who returns in the hopes of striking an incomplete from his academic record.
Though one wishes at times that Gurney had concocted a connective story line for his piece, the scenes on hand are charming and thought-provoking enough to constitute a full evening of theatre, and a delightful one at that. Clocking in at a brisk eighty minutes, there's nothing too earth-shattering on display in this play, but there's something almost comforting about watching the struggles that have gone on - and will continue to go on - in the name of great books.
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New York reviews
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Three Sisters, Classic Stage Company
The Piano Lesson, Yale Repertory Theatre
The Momentum, Laurie Beechman Theatre
The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, La MaMa E.T.C.
John Gabriel Borkman, BAM Harvey Theater
Blood From a Stone, Acorn Theatre
Malfi, Inc., Theatre 54
Pieces, 59E59 Theaters
A Delicate Balance, Yale Repertory Theatre
The Memorandum, Beckett Theatre
The Scottsboro Boys, Lyceum Theatre
Driving Miss Daisy, Golden Theatre
Futura, TBG Theatre
La Bete, The Music Box Theatre
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
A Life in the Theatre, Schoenfeld Theatre
In Transit, 59E59 Theaters
theatre
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