Brian Bock is Todd David and Claire Siebers plays Christine in the Brick’s and Hearth’s co-production of Events at The Brick in Brooklyn.
Bailey Williams’s Events at The Brick is a wild and woolly comedy that examines the stresses of current workplace culture. It deals with job-related themes—the high demands for productivity, the delusion that one is irreplaceable—in a style that is witty, original, and entertaining. Directed by Sarah Blush, and co-presented by The Hearth, Events doesn’t altogether succeed as a coherent narrative. Nonetheless, it uses the properties of the theater in a deeply poetic and intriguing way.
Dee Beasnael is Monica (left), Haley Wong (center) is Francine, and Julia Greer is Brigid at the Todd David Design firm. Photographs by Travis Emery Hackett.
The play presents a quasi-charismatic leader, Todd David (Brian Bock), and his team, who are in the business of event planning. His namesake company is committed to helping clients organize their life’s events and shape them into something timeless. For, as Todd reminds his employees, they not only help people to plan their events, they are storytellers and idea generators:
I am really excited about this new idea, gang. I cannot wait to see what we come up with. … Never forget that you are the next generation of storytellers and idea generators that make the magic happen.
Events has a non-linear narrative, with surreal characters and absurdist ideas swirling through it. It takes place in eerily adjacent worlds: there is the vibrant fluorescent one that Todd and his cohorts inhabit, and then there are the half-lit shadowlands of a character called Itchy (Zuzanna Szadkowski), whose isolation is accented by a single shaded light (lighting design by Masha Tsimring). Although Itchy is supposedly the office manager, she appears to be delusional.
Set in an ultramodern workspace, Events revolves around a dynamic team that worships glitz and glamour. Although Todd is the one who says yes or no to any proposed business dealings, he is seldom present in the office. Instead, he seems to be more interested in rubbing shoulders with celebrities and creating art (his foam-encrusted chair with its “Do not sit” tag is the most prominent prop on stage) than engaging in work. But fortunately the team seems to operate quite well anyway.
From left: Beasnael, Derek Smith as Dario, Siebers and Bock hold a conference in Events.
This gets proven quite dramatically during an office phone conference that Todd joins from a beach. In a bizarre turn of events, Todd is cut off from the conference call when a surreal stranger, purportedly with three legs, ominously approaches and presumably murders him. Instead of calling the police, the domineering Christine screams: “No one is being murdered before the gala!”
The character of Itchy is a conundrum. She doesn’t physically interact with any of her associates until the play’s final scene, and she speaks about an unseen person called Kristina, who is allegedly trying to poison her. But, oddly enough, in her monologues to the audience, Itchy is quite relatable and human in spite of being a potential danger to her office-mates.
If Itchy is paranoid about being poisoned, the other employees feel in danger of losing themselves in the daily—and often nightly—grind of their job. In fact, the company’s most aggressive member, Christine, gives a cynical piece of advice to her fellow workers: “Girl. You shouldn’t have brought your soul here. That’s your well-being. That’s your meaning-making.”
Although Events is fascinating to watch, it gets bogged down in its corporate lingo. Terms like “sustainable deliverables” and “future proof” might lend authenticity to the dialogue, but this business patois isn’t likely to be easily digested and at times it’s a drawback to the production.
The designers in Events get down to work.
What bolsters Events is uniformly convincing acting. Zuzanna Szadkowski is spot-on as the fragile Itchy. Claire Sieber infuses Christine with lots of vinegar and vim. Brian Bock, as Todd, is well-cast as the grandiose boss who is totally obsessed with his brand and image. Julia Greer embodies the absurdly over-committed Brigid, who trades her kidney for a bolt of champagne chenille. Derek Smith’s Dario is superb as the firm’s idea generator. Dee Beasnael imbues Monica with the strong spirit of her native Chicago. And Haley Wong plays the new office manager Francine with the decisiveness of a supreme court judge.
Much of the play’s comedy comes from watching a group of workers do everything but somersaults to keep their projects humming and clients happy. Of course, the dark underside to this is seen by Dario, who sums it up in his own doublespeak: “When the event is your life it is hard your life is not also the event.” Events might not deliver on all theatrical fronts, but it surely serves as a cautionary tale on today’s corporate culture.
The Brick’s and Hearth’s co-production of Events runs at The Brick Theater (579 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn) through Dec. 18. Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Sunday. For tickets, visit bricktheater.com or telecharge.com.
