The Studio Theatre 2ndStage is celebrating 2013 with the United States’ premiere of a biting satire about office relationships, a dark vision of how corporations force their workers to surrender their individuality and identity.
Written by British playwright Mike Bartlett, “Contractions” addresses the difficulty, even impossibility, of having discreet office romances. Set in an anonymous place in an unspecified modern time, Alyssa Wilmoth Keegan stars as Emma, a worker in the sales department of a large corporation.
Emma’s boss, the Manager (Holly Twyford), has become concerned that Emma is in breach of contract because of an affair with a colleague, Darren, who is never seen but whose presence is essential to the play. The Manager summons Emma to her office for a series of meetings, during which the nature of Darren and Emma’s relationship is examined in detail.
Emma is an excellent worker who begins the first meeting dressed for success. She’s assured and self-reliant but has her self-confidence chipped away by the ruthless Manager, who proceeds to turn the firm’s legalistic definition of what constitutes a “romantic or sexual relationship” into something invasive and prurient.
| Onstage |
| ‘Contractions’ |
| » Where: Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW |
| » When: Through Jan. 27 |
| » Info: $30 to $35; 202-332-3300; studiotheatre.org |
Twyford is chilling as the unfeeling Manager, who first wants to know the particulars of Emma and Darren’s relationship. Then, she wants to know how long it will last. At each turn, she compares Emma’s answers with Darren’s in unseen interviews with Darren.
Emma is sensitively portrayed by Wilmoth Keegan. As the organization begins to control her life more and more, as Darren is sent to Kiev, when Darren and Emma’s son dies and the company insists on possessing the boy’s body, the play takes on absurd, Orwellian overtones.
Directed by Duncan Macmillan, “Contractions” gains speed and momentum with every passing scene until, at the end, it reveals the blackest, most bizarre vision of the ability of the corporation to destroy an individual’s privacy and sanity.
Much of the impact of “Contractions” comes from Brandee Mathies’ costumes. Twyford wears a gray power pantsuit and six-inch heels. Emma appears in well-put-together business attire. As the Manager begins to attack her life, Emma’s clothing changes: Her high heels give way to flats, her neatly tucked-up hair falls around her face.
There is a question at the end of “Contractions.” Emma agrees to see the company psychiatrist and returns to work. But is the “new” Emma just an Emma clone, programmed to think as the corporation wants her to in exchange for a paycheck? In Bartlett’s cynical world, probably so.
