Lobby Hero

Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, directed by James Vinson, is a potent comedy-drama that steadily builds into a searing political look into the lives of its multi-layered and thoroughly distinct characters. 

It starts with a meandering conversation between Jeff, a slacker security officer played by Charles Grounds, and his boss, William, played in an impressively dynamic performance by Victory Ndukwe. Grounds gives an interesting performance, and as the tension intensifies, his comedic presence makes itself known. The remark from the chronically upright William that he likes Jeff, without knowing why, comes to be a fitting characterisation, and the shifts between humour and drama are carried very well by the pair of actors. 

However, once idealistic rookie cop Dawn, played by Monique Fisher, and her partner Bill enter, the story lifts from an amusing, if annoying, illustration of workaday life into a gripping exploration of truth and moral dilemmas. 

Ryan Murphy’s performance is incredible in Bill's nuanced menace. The political commentary threaded into the play is at its most caustic when he’s simply allowed to talk. It is in these moments where the flaws of the script are shown, however. The lines sometimes feel awfully self-satisfied, with a tendency to indulge in circular exchanges of language which take a long time to say comparatively little - perhaps an all-too-successful attempt to depict the tedium of Jeff’s job. There is also a painful habit in the dialogue to explicitly outline the themes of the plot, which, amid the multiple moral dilemmas that ensnare each of the characters, gets in the way of the play’s many qualities. 

In its indictment of police culture and workplace sexual assault, Lobby Hero feels very of-the-moment, despite its original production date of 2001. The complexities of its characters, who are, the writer observes, all caught together in the same corrupt system, allow for a compelling and deeply entertaining story that, once the play establishes itself, comes together impressively.

It is the kind of play that demonstrates the form-specific power of theatre to dig into the injustices of the world we live in, so that it might show them to the light.