It’s usually a bad idea for playwrights to direct their work; they indulge weaknesses that, invisible to them, would not escape an outside eye. Worse, they won’t make cuts.
But if every rule exists to be refuted, two absorbing new works by The Other Half Theater Company prove that the writer who creates the dialogue can make it work-sometimes well indeed.
Deftly written, sharply observed and warmly performed by a young and ready cast, the one-acts that make up “Where’s the Cheese?” explore with hard-earned sympathy and scathingly detailed satire the dead ends of both blue- and white-collar jobs.
Theater can double as vocational therapy: The careers in “Cheese” will either make you love or hate your own.
A scary portrait of two guys who are drifting while stuck, Robert Laine’s “Burger Death” contrasts two Generation Xers mired in dead-end jobs and a not-so-quiet desperation.
With deadpan detachment, Bill Coelius runs down his work as a fast-food manager with a useless B.A.; he describes the man whose heart attack seemed a comment on the cuisine and the disintegration of a colleague (Carolyn Caporusso) from boredom and drugs. Confessing with the impassivity of a broken slacker, David Smith is a mall clerk at a linen store; for him, recreation means getting high in front of a toy store.
Fully exploiting Laine’s eloquent fatalism, Smith and Coelius provide a raw look at how junk-food jobs shrink the worker to the task.
Less introspective, “Kopy Kats,” by Kevin King, spares no corporate stereotype in its roller-coaster ride through a cutthroat advertising agency. Though overwritten in its melodramatic final scenes, King’s diabolically plotted script contains in 40 minutes as much twisting treachery as David Mamet packed into “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
Ruthlessly realistic, King’s huckster-ridden snakepit teems with deadline-driven climbers, their native insecurity ignited by fears of the agency’s downsizing.
Smith plays a desperate copywriter who must come up with an emergency jingle to satisfy his baby-food client. Coelius is Donald, a student intern with a rare case of integrity; he’s reluctant to use a relative’s clout to push his career.
Sadly, Donald has no map for this minefield; clinging to a sense of honor only sets him up for the kill.
King, who has a solid grasp of the cruelties of office politics, skillfully detonates the plot reversals. Paul Gerard smoothly portrays a take-no-prisoners rival and Tony Rago dryly depicts a disillusioned ad artist.
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“Where’s the Cheese?” runs through Sept. 30 at Cafe Voltaire, 3231 N. Clark St. Phone 312-281-7251.