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"All Calls Will Be Monitored"
"All Calls Will Be Monitored"
If you’re that rare individual who never had to call a tech support helpline to fix some problem—my own calls usually have been about computer, purchasing, or financial issues—then you probably won’t appreciate the mildly satirical, SNL-like opening scene of Tech Support, a mediocre time-traveling comedy written and directed by Debra Whitfield in the intimate Theater C at 59E59.
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| Margot White. All photos: Russ Rowland. |
In the scene, set in the spring of 2020, Pamela Stark (Margot White), an attractive, 40-year-old,
New York City dealer in antique books, is on her landline struggling to resolve
a wireless printer problem. At the same time, she's trying to figure out how to operate her
new cappuccino machine. Add to that some sassy feedback from Siri, as well as well as a phone message she's leaving being cut short for lack of time at the other end.
A nervous wreck, not only because of her technical difficulties
but because her husband has served her with divorce papers, Pamela is on the
verge of losing it, especially when she learns she’s number 267 on the list
waiting for a live representative. Yes, you’re thinking, been there, done that.
But things soon shift and, for the most part, leave the tech satire high and dry.
When, to Pam’s delighted surprise, someone finally gets on
the line, he has an East-Indian accent but bears the decidedly non-East Indian
name of Chip, a mildly amusing reminder of the location of call centers that want us to feel like we're talking to fellow Americans, not folks in Delhi. This leads to an incipient phone relationship between the
desperate Pam and the professionally reserved Chip that soon, for no reason other than the playwright's whim, turns into a nightmare when a female voice instructs Pam to select one
of the numbers being recited.
Although she doesn't realize it at first, these are actually specific years, so, presto, Pamela is whisked back in time to the same lower Manhattan apartment in 1919. Again, it’s not a fantasy, electric shock, a spider's bite, or the result of drugs or a knock on the head. It's really happening.
Although she doesn't realize it at first, these are actually specific years, so, presto, Pamela is whisked back in time to the same lower Manhattan apartment in 1919. Again, it’s not a fantasy, electric shock, a spider's bite, or the result of drugs or a knock on the head. It's really happening.
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| Margot White, Mark Lotito. |
The place Pamela lives in, she discovers, was Mrs. Blackwell’s boarding
house 100 years ago. What today is her studio apartment was in 1919 a common room occupied
by two young suffragettes, Maisie (Leanne Carrrera) and Grace (Laurel
Friedman), a handsome, young man named Chip (Ryan Avalos), and the widowed, middle-aged
proprietor, Charlie (Mark Lotito). Bewildered, Pam keeps responding with her
2020 locutions, which meet with gentle bemusement. Even her stylish black pants
suit (soon replaced by a properly dignified 1919 ensemble) raises barely a hair
on anyone’s eyebrows.
The premise: shifting Pam around in
time, from 1919, to 1946, to 1977 (judging from hints like “Stayin’ Alive” and
the ERA amendment). Oddly, we never revisit 2020, The goal: to satirize changing
fashions, language, mores, and the onslaught of progress in the form of advances
in modern appliances. We learn that people before us were also forced to confront new technology in their daily lives. It's not a new idea but it has potential for comic treatment.
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| Margot White, Leanne Cabrera. |
The devices covered are not only today’s, like wireless printers,
coffee machines, and cell phones, but minor ones from back in the day, like the Wireless Vac-u-ette
(an
actual non-electric vacuum cleaner), electric pop-up
toaster (invented in 1919), and Tupperware. The script also seeks laughs by implying that
the Coca-Cola of 1919 had a kick in it, although Snopes.com explains
that whatever traces Coke had of cocaine by then were too tiny to have any discernible
effect.
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| Margot White, Mark Lotito, Leanne Cabrera, Ryan Avalos, Laurel Friedman. |
As suggested by the presence of such things as suffragettes, a pregnant
woman who helps introduce the (unnamed) subject of abortion, and ERA activists, we note that a principal concern is the rise of feminism and its demands.
Whitfield’s ambitious attempt has the potential to be a funny, meaningful
look at the difficulties of coping with progress. But, unlike Mark Twain’s
novel on a roughly similar subject, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s
Court, the playwright is unable to milk the comedy for meaningful laughs.
Instead, she gets lost in the weeds of Pam’s relationships with the people she
meets along her never-explained time travels, including an unconvincing romance with one of
the Chips she befriends—much younger than her—whose name inspires her with the
idea for a certain little computer invention. Get it?
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| Ryan Avalos, Leanne Cabrera. |
Tech Support is clumsily directed and inadequately designed.
Natalie Taylor Hart’s unattractive apartment set—its upper border decorated
with panels resembling computer circuitry—serves for both exteriors and interiors,
although which is which is sometimes hard to discern. The actors themselves
shift the furniture, one item being a bed that looks about as big as the bucket
seat of a car with its back pulled down.
Elliott Forrest's video projections of city views, as well as hyperkinetic effects to reflect time shifts, add a touch of visual interest, and Deborah Constantine's lighting is serviceable. Some of Jackie O’Donnell’s costumes are
sufficiently period-correct, others--especially the men's--are not. You may also wonder why, when the
action shifts to 1946 and Pam is still wearing her floor-length, 1919 outfit,
no one seems to notice.
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| Margot White, Ryan Avalos. |
Margot White struggles to make Pamela cutely but smartly appealing.
She lacks the kind of comic timing and nuance required and too often resorts to
overacting, sometimes emitting a self-conscious chuckle to express the character’s
confusion. Admittedly, the role is a challenge that would probably defeat anyone
playing it.
For example, Pamela is highly educated but, even after she realizes
her dilemma, fails to use it to her advantage. Thus, instead of knowing better,
she keeps using 2020 references that no one understands. And, rather than exploiting her predicament by using her latter-day knowledge (like the hero in Twain's novel)—except when showing someone
how to operate a toaster or open a Tupperware container—she just goes with the
flow, a victim rather than a conqueror of circumstance.
Tech Support is in need of tech support, even if it
means being number 267 on the list.
59E59 Theaters/Theater C
59 E. 59th St., NYC
Through August 21
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