I’m going to go about this review a bit backwards, talk about the actors, then about the play. One of the big draws, after all, is Megan Mullally. Megan Mullally is a hoot. She was a hoot as Karen on Will & Grace, she was a hoot in another small theatre play I saw her in a few years ago (a drama) and she is a hoot as Beverly Wilkins, the deadeningly routine receptionist at a deadeningly routine office suite.

I recognized her character immediately from years of working in such environments, places where nothing really happens, your friendships feel real but are really only superficial. She has the attempt at fashion sense, the shuffle of someone who has spent entirely too much time in their life sitting in a bad chair behind a desk being suspicious of everyone who enters “their” domain. She embodies the busy-body interest in everyone’s affairs and the obsessive/compulsive care with which she executes her petty power in a way that perfectly brings to mind almost every receptionist in every corporate office in which I have spent my time. It is hard to believe Ms. Mullally, given her star status, could have worked in such places to have known the drill so completely, but everyone has to start somewhere, I suppose.

Jeff Perry, one of those stalwart actors that everyone knows the face of, plays the boss, Edward Raymond, with his usual hang-dog expression and demeanor. Given his television credits alone, I wonder why he took this relatively small role – I guess he just wants to work. Good for him. He is a wonderful actor, but, I think, here he focused a bit too much on the pathos of this man’s life of quiet desperation. This is a comedy, albeit a dark one, after all, and the character’s desperation is comedic even if it is dark.

Chris McKenna is fine as the dashing but slightly ominous representative of the “central office” come to make a visit, although he was directed to sit in profile for most of the play for some reason, so much of what he did was lost. Jennifer Finnigan as Lorraine Taylor, the sexy, scatterbrained assistant that occupies every executive suite, has some good, funny schtick but her performance is mostly just that, schtick. Early on, she has a monologue that starts out sounding like she had a wonderful time the previous evening, but ends up sounding like she decidedly didn’t. There was no internal awareness in the beginning that it had been, ultimately, a bad night - it was entirely “played for the comedy” of the reversal with no organic through-line. I felt this of a lot of her performance.

Okay, now to the play itself. The Receptionist, as I have already implied, is a dark comedy about the mind-numbing sameness and pointlessness of the day-to-day in American office life. It is an environment where everyone knows everything about each other, but really knows nothing about each other. It tries to be almost absurdist in the way the people put on a happy game face and move forward against the tide of an empty, empty life where collecting tea cups and dating the wrong guy are the only things to talk about.

It almost seems to attempt reflecting Beckett’s deep, funny look at shallow existence. It doesn’t pull this off. There is much humor, and the environment is absolutely recognizable, but the sameness is just that, sameness. Beckett, even with his incessant repetitiveness and whatever else he can be accused of, is never boring. The sameness here doesn’t weigh on the audience, it just makes them wonder if they’ll remember to pick up that nice gewgaw for Aunt Lucy’s birthday party next week.

There is an indication, with a strange monologue given by the boss that opens the play, that something is amiss. Half-way through there is a twist (hopefully you won’t glean what it is from what I say here) that pays this off and puts a final absurdist spin on the play, but, unfortunately, this twist also throws the play into a tragic mode rather than the high comedy of an absurdist horror, as if a different play had started half-way through. This is due, I think, to both the script and the direction. The horror is such an absurd one, Beckett-like (or even Kafka-like) in its outrageous plausibility, in its sense that we have no control of our existence, that I longed for the opportunity for uncomfortable laughter, but all I got was soap opera drama. (Even Ms. Mullally’s fine performance didn’t pull the play up to its absurdist aspirations.)

Even the sound, by John Zalewski, didn’t quite bring us where it aspired to. Upon entering the theatre, you slowly become aware of the dull murmur and ringing phones of a busy office, but it is so underplayed you must strain to even figure out what you’re hearing and it doesn’t at all depict the relatively un-busy office we are about to enter.

The set, however, by Chris Covics, was very good, very indicative of the stamped out front offices of businesses in high-rises throughout America. I felt slightly stifled as soon as I walked into the theatre, as if I were about to be interviewed for a low level job I was overqualified for.

The costumes, by Ann Closs-Farley, were also quite good. From the Receptionist’s held-in clothing to inappropriately sexy dress and blouse of the assistant; from the crisp suit of the guy from the central office to the boss’s rumpled suit, they told us who these people were before a single line was spoken.

The Receptionist was written by Adam Bock and directed by Bart DeLorenzo. The lighting design was by Christopher Kuhl.

The Receptionist is performed Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. through September 20, 2009 and Sundays at 2 p.m and 7 p.m. on August 9 and 16, 2009.

The Odyssey Theater is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda, Los Angeles, 90025, one block north of Olympic Blvd.

Ticket prices: Thursdays and Fridays $25.00, Saturdays and Sundays, $30.00

Reservations online at www.OdysseyTheatre.com or by phone at (310) 477-2055.