LOBBY HERO at The Hayes Theater, NYC

[Cooper]

Lobby Hero, written by Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester By The Sea) and directed by Trip Cullman, with Michael Cera as Security Guard Jeff, Chris Evans as Officer Bill, Brian Tyree Henry as Supervisor William, and Bel Powley as Officer Dawn. It's now playing on Broadway.

 

Before seeing this play, I had heard very little about it and, yes, I was pleasantly surprised after seeing it. The play takes place in a Manhattan apartment building's lobby. There's a lot of talk that goes on in that lobby during the graveyard shift. The cast is made up of Jeff, a young security guard (not a doorman), with big ambitions, his boss, "Security Captain" William, who's hard on Jeff but does like him and even trusts him with some disturbing facts about his brother. Also in the cast are 2 NYPD officers. Bill, on the force for 7 years, and Dawn, a rookie female officer. Dawn, who has once slept with her partner and has a love interest in him, learns some not so professional things about her unpredictable partner which makes working together most difficult. All meet up in the lobby for revealing conversations.

 

The plot deals with choices. It's a struggle between loyalty & doing what's right. It's an excellent script and truly captured my attention. A wonderful cast which made this amazing play even better.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Edited April 12, 2018 by Cooper

[edjames]

I wasn't that thrilled. It somehow seemed unresolved to me. I wouldn't buy a full-rice ticket. Mr. Cera, seemed to have a cold, or allergies, he kept wiping his nose throughout.

It should be noted that the play is set in 1995, a time when politics and ethics were different. This is a story of ethics and morals, a "what would you do if you were these characters" tale. It was good, but not great.

Here's what the NYTimes said:

 

Review: Chris Evans and Michael Cera Tell Lies to Live by in ‘Lobby Hero’

LOBBY HERO

• 2 hrs. and 25 min.
  Closing Date: May 13, 2018
  Helen Hayes Theater, 240 W. 44th St.
  
• By BEN BRANTLEY. MARCH 26, 2018
  

• 
  Shut up. Keep talking.
   
  Those clashing orders whisper side-by-side in your mind as you watch the meticulously acted revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s “Lobby Hero,” which opened on Monday night at the renovated Helen Hayes Theater, the new Broadway home for Second Stage Theater.
  because you will probably come to — if not like — then feel personally invested in the four self-sabotaging New Yorkers so completely embodied here by Michael Cera, Chris Evans, Brian Tyree Henry and Bel Powley. And none of them can participate in the simplest exchanges of words without doing serious damage.
   
  Sure, the talk at first seems merely casual as these four characters pair off to shoot the breeze in and around an apartment building lobby where it always feels like 3 a.m. But lives as well as livelihoods are possibly at stake in what’s being said, and everyday conversation becomes a minefield. Whenever someone starts talking again after a long silence, you feel an “Ouch!” coming on.
   
  At the same time, you can’t wait to hear what’s about to emerge from the mouths of Jeff (Mr. Cera), a newbie security guard (don’t call him “doorman”) and his exacting boss, William (Mr. Henry); and the Mutt-and-Jeff police partners who drop by. They are the swaggering Bill (Mr. Evans,in a terrific Broadway debut) and his rookie partner, Dawn (Ms. Powley).
   
  For one thing, much of what they have to say is both achingly funny and so pathetic it verges on tragic. For another, the combined wit and non-wisdom of these fallible (i.e. human) beings offers a fascinating reflection on those shaky internal compasses we call moral instincts.
  

As to the ethical quandaries and quagmires in which these people are mired, they feel even more pointedly and sadly relevant than they did when “Lobby Hero” was first performed at Playwrights Horizons 17 years ago. References to sexual harassment, abuses of power in the workplace and racial profiling scarcely seemed to raise an eyebrow when I first saw the show in 2001; they evoke audible, anxious murmurs in the audience of 2018.

 

Bryan Tyree Henry, at right, as Mr. Cera’s boss in the play, which is having its Broadway premiere 17 years after its debut.

In the age of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, Americans may be newly receptive to “Lobby Hero.” But don’t imagine that this work, directed with savvy restraint by Trip Cullman, is an agenda-driven debate.

 

Mr. Lonergan, you see, doesn’t work in bold blacks and whites, but in compelling shades of gray. He understands that purity of thought and deed is pretty much impossible in this muddy world. As a creator of plays (“This Is Our Youth,” “Hold On to Me Darling”) and films (“You Can Count on Me,” “Manchester by the Sea”), he specializes in screw-ups, compromised souls who would like to do the right thing, if only they had the backbone for it, or if they could figure out what it is.

 

His dialogue is fueled by vacillation, equivocation and contradiction, with sentences that seem to eat their own words. Few actors are as qualified to deliver such precisely indefinite speech as Mr. Cera, a veteran of the ace 2014 Broadway revival of “This Is Our Youth.” Mr. Cera’s Jeff is a quintessential Lonergan loser, an uneasy 27-year-old who was thrown out of the Navy for smoking pot and has vowed to become a real adult.

 

So now he works the night shift in a residential lobby that reeks of urban loneliness. (David Rockwell is the set designer.) It’s a job that’s hard to take seriously. But Jeff’s disciplined supervisor, played with bone-tired alertness by Mr. Henry, has a strict list of rules and regulations. He, at least, seems to be someone who knows what’s what.

 

So, at first glance, does Mr. Evans’s Bill. He’s a cocky, friendly guy who oozes self-assurance and is known around his precinct as Super Cop. (And, yes, this is the same Mr. Evans who played the superhero Captain America onscreen.) Bill is just the person for someone like the eager, dewy Dawn, fresh out of the Police Academy, to have as a protective mentor, right?

 

And there you have the tidy setup for a play that operates on a system of moving parallels. Jeff’s admiration for his boss is tested after William learns that his older brother has been arrested in connection with the murder of a nurse and William is asked to provide an alibi. William, who is African-American, knows how easy it would be for his brother to get lost in the legal system.

 

Dawn’s hero worship of Bill is complicated by their having slept together. Disenchantment will set in fully when she learns why her partner is paying such regular visits to the building where Jeff works.

 

Mr. Evans, in his first time on Broadway, portrays a police veteran who takes a rookie (Bel Powley) under his wing. These characters wind up unwisely confiding in one another; they can’t help themselves. And by the play’s end everyone will have betrayed or been betrayed — in most cases, both.

 

The first time I saw “Lobby Hero,” it felt a bit too openly schematic. It still does occasionally, especially during a protracted stretch of secret sharing in the second act.

 

But the performances here are all so grounded that you never doubt their characters’ authenticity or (pardon the word) sincerity. And because each portrait is so completely and ingeniously physicalized (watch how they each inhabit a uniform), we soon learn their “tells”; we know when they’re deceiving themselves.

 

Mr. Evans is a marvel of smooth calculation and bluster. His Bill is the most blatantly manipulative of the characters, which means the most likely to succeed.

 

Ms. Powley’s avid, impulsive and dangerously green Dawn is the perfect sidekick to this handsome sleaze. Mr. Henry (FX’s “Atlanta”) offers a deeply moving study of resignation and rebellion, courage and compromise in uneasy counterpoint.

 

Mr. Cera’s perfectly uneasy Jeff gives full weight to both the hopeful decency and bad faith that lurk in all Lonergan characters. It makes sense when others say they can’t tell when Jeff is joking; he doesn’t always know himself.

 

There’s a reason that Mr. Rockwell’s set revolves between scenes, forcing us to adjust our angles of observation. Like morality, identity is relative in “Lobby Hero.” Few playwrights match Mr. Lonergan in making confident art out of such constantly shifting uncertainty.

[foxy]

Chris Evans has a gay brother. While this has nothing to do with the play I think its very important because his brother is hot. Is there a better reason?

 

http://www.newnownext.com/chris-evans-scott-evans/11/2016/

Edited April 12, 2018 by foxy

[Cooper]

Some additional information on Lobby Hero:

 

[Cooper]

Lobby Hero was written in 1999. It's was 1st performed in 2001 and is still relevant today.

 

Ben Brantley wrote, "As to the ethical quandaries and quagmires in which these people are mired, they feel even more pointedly and sadly relevant than they did when “Lobby Hero” was first performed at Playwrights Horizons 17 years ago. References to sexual harassment, abuses of power in the workplace and racial profiling scarcely seemed to raise an eyebrow when I first saw the show in 2001; they evoke audible, anxious murmurs in the audience of 2018."

 

And, the cast agrees:

 

[Cooper]

In this video, Chris Evans wants you to “hate his character but not him as an actor”. The cast discusses their roles & what they hope you’ll take away from this play.

 

Following Lobby Hero I joined some theater going friends at Hardware Bar. We had an excellent discussion about this play & its relevancy today. We all agreed that this is one amazing cast.

 

 

Easy ticket to get at TKTS.