Empathy coach Sofia (Sam Jackson, right) looks on as Jon (Joseph O’Malley, left), Jordan (Phil Wong, second from left) and Howie (Max Forman-Mullin) laugh in Do You Feel Anger? Photo by David Allen.
By WOODY WEINGARTEN
If you think the phrases “non-reciprocal blowjob,” “piss chart,” and “life is an oblong” are inherently funny and might be even funnier if they’re each repeated about 49 times in 90 minutes, go see Do You Feel Anger? at the Marin Theatre.
If you believe several adult characters acting like acting-out, clueless toddlers crammed into an office playpen of debt collectors might be funny in a slapschtick, farcical way, do go.
And if you consider mysterious or untethered themes, an O. Henry ending, a marvelous secondary set spotlighting three toilets, or good lighting and sound effects between scenes as items that might satisfy your cerebral or sexual needs, go.
A recent gray-haired audience liked the show’s office absurdities enough to applaud more than a little when it was over, enough to periodically chuckle quietly or even cackle or guffaw on rare occasion. On the other hand, a woman in the front row volunteered a three-word stinger: “That was painful!”
The plot? Sofia is an empathy coach newly hired to buoy the consciousness of three workers drawn by playwright Mara Nelson-Greenberg as somewhere between the classic personas of TV’s hilarious satire, The Office, and David Mamet’s biting dark satire, Glengarry Glen Ross.
The staff is overseen by a fourth cartoonish character, an office manager who doesn’t know what a woman’s period is and who joins the others in the belief that empathy is a bird.
Eva (intentionally played by linda maria giron with a grating ever-screechy voice and theater-shaking laugh) keeps getting mugged, or is delusional about it, or maybe both, and is obsessed with being a mermaid.
Jordan (left) and Howie goof around while Sofia watches. Photo by David Allen.
Howie (exquisitely portrayed by Max Forman-Mullin as a macho man-child whose anger is always on the brink and whose horniness is almost always on display) is physically and verbally over the top.
Jordan (a Phil Wong tour de farce distortion whose bug-eyes are aways in humorous motion) joins Howie as a resident misogynist.
Jon, the manager who’s interested only in having his mandated documentation signed by Sofia even if she’s unsuccessful, is skillfully delivered by lanky Joseph O’Malley with legs that jerk and slide like a ballet dancer on coke.
Jesse Caldwell, by the way, is excellent in his cameo monologue as Marcus, a geezer bomber-wannabe who’s seemingly lost the key to his dementia ward.
And Atosa Babaoff acquits herself well in dual roles, that of Janie, a woman who’s permanently ensconced in the bathroom, and Sofia’s long-suffering mom who’s featured in a parallel storyline that ultimately ties some stuff together.
It should be noted that there’s a major disconnect between the entire cast of crazies and Sam Jackson, who inhabits Sofia with a serious insatiable need to please. That gap might have been shortened.
Director Becca Wolff might also have sliced the text a bit or added an intermission; the workplace comedy feels a tad long in spite of being timed at an hour and a half.
All the acting’s worth seeing and there are, to be sure, a few wonderful lines. Such as “Everyone’s starting to say the clitoris is a hoax.”
Not incidentally, a “piss chart” is never explained in the show but one Google keystroke will instantly indicate that it’s used as an unclear metaphor based on its definition of a color map designed to illustrate hydration and urine levels. Who knew?
Do You Feel Anger? Will play at the Marin Theater, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through June 29. Tickets: $47 to $85. Information: 341-388-5200 or info@marintheatre.org.
Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.
