Times are tough for the heroic “sandwich artists” of Bess Wohl’s absurdist, existentialist, surrealist, and non-stop hilarious American Hero, the latest Los Angeles Premiere from IAMA Theatre Company.

 Meet Ted (Graham Outerbridge), Jamie (Anna Lamadrid), and Sheri (Laura Mann), the newly hired work force of an about-to-open subway sandwich franchise somewhere in middle America, each with his or her own reason for accepting the kind of $7.25-an-hour job that makes the factory workers of recent L.A. hits Skeleton Crew and Sweat seem to have it cushy by comparison (or at least until their factories shut down and they too probably had to go to work at a neighborhood Subway).

Downsizing has lost go-getter Ted his management position at Bank Of America, a bit of mousse theft cost the bodacious Jamie hers at Supercuts, and if mousy Sheri hasn’t gotten fired from either of the two she now has (she’s also working nights at El Taco), she’s just eighteen so give her time.

 Adding to the trio’s miseries are financial woes that a $58-a-day paycheck will not solve. (Ted’s got a wife and two kids, single mom Jamie has three of her own, Sheri is working double to pay for her sick dad’s meds.)

 If all this sounds like it could make for a contemporary Arthur Miller drama, it probably could, but Wohl takes a stealth comedic approach to show how little corporate America cares about anyone who’s not part of the 1%.

Rodney To completes the American Hero cast as franchise owner Bob (probably not the name he was born with), whose limited command of English and insistence on doing things by the book, no matter how ridiculous, not only scores laughs galore, his obvious foreignness awakens fears that he just might be a terrorist, no matter that (in a bit of casting brilliance by director James Eckhouse) there isn’t much terrorist threat in the U.S. from Filipino immigrants.

Though Sheri, Jamie, and Ted do eventually manage to make a model sandwich in the requisite “under twenty seconds,” Bob holding a stopwatch to make sure they do it fast and furious, this brief moment of triumph is soon followed by a major dilemma.

Not only has Bob not shown up for their Grand Opening, he’s left no security code, no usable contact phone number, and no way for his work staff to order enough supplies to confection all but the most basic of their signature subs.

 Enter American Hero’s cynical celebration of American ingenuity.

It takes most of Wohl’s latest comedy for the playwright’s message to take shape, and even by lights-out you may find yourself debating what precisely the point of it all has been … but no matter.

Getting there is fun indeed, particularly with director Eckhouse eliciting four of the sharpest and brightest performances in town, or seven if you figure that To plays four roles.

 Though Outerbridge reads rather too young to play a 43-year-old with twenty B-of-A years under his belt, he’s one bang-up actor in the Wilson/Baldwin brothers mode, and just wait till Ted attempts to resist the sexual temptation offered by the always stellar Lamadrid, a firecracker of a Jamie whose unexpected depths give the 2016-17 Scenie-winning Breakout Actress Of The Year the chance to show off considerable dramatic chops as well.

Mann dims her real-life radiance to vanish into Sheri’s severely introverted skin and make her metamorphosis all the more striking, and To is sheer comic perfection as Bob, as a dissatisfied customer the L.A. stage favorite plays floucy to riotous effect, as a human-sized Sandwich, and as a low-level corporate cog named Gregory.

 Scenic designer Justin Huen’s spot-on set morphs little-by-little from nothingness into an authentic-looking sandwich shop. Josh Epstein’s real-and-surreal lighting, Peter Bayne’s pitch-perfect sound-and-music design, Melissa Trn’s just-right costumes (especially her deliberately horrid red uniforms), and Michael O’Hara’s multitude of food-related props are terrific too, and fight choreographer Edgar Landa gives one character some gasp-and-laugh-inducing knife play.

American Hero is produced by Jay Marcus. Lexi Sloan is associate producer. Rachel Berney Needleman is assistant director. Kay Foster is stage manager and Jacqueline Gil is assistant stage manager. Nick Bonanno, Bailey Humiston, Andria Kozica, and Charlie Farrell are understudies.

An auspicious season opener for one of L.A.’s premier membership theater companies in their new home upstairs at the Pasadena Playhouse, American Hero is IAMA at its hilarious, cutting-edge best.

Carrie Hamilton Theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave, Pasadena.
www.iamatheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
October 5, 2018
Photos: Dean Chechvala

Tags: Bess Wohl, Carrie Hamilton Theatre, IAMA Theatre Company, Los Angeles Theater Review, Pasadena Playhouse