Everyone’s out for their fifteen minutes of fame in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ ripped-from-today’s-headlines gut-puncher Gloria, now being given an electrifying Orange County premiere at Chance Theater.

The office banter amongst the Millennials who toil for Gloria’s New Yorker-style magazine may be catty, querulous, gossipy, back-stabbing, and hilarious as all get-out, but playwright BJJ has far more than edgy cable sitcom humor on his mind in his 2015 off-Broadway hit.

It’s a day like any other for 20something office cogs Dean (Will Martella), Kendra (Audrey Forman), Ani (Emma Laird), and Miles (Johnathan Middleton), i.e. Dean has shown up hungover from the night before, the late-as-usual Kendra once again gives new meaning to the term office bitch, Ani is doing her best to not make waves, and intern Miles’s eager-beaverness is putting all three slackers to shame.

Indeed, only two things make this morning stand out from those that have come before.

To begin with, only Dean has had the decency to show up at the housewarming party thrown last night by longtime copy editor Gloria (Branda Lock), and he isn’t about to let his co-workers off for leaving him there alone and bored out of his mind.

It also happens that this morning’s Internet is all abuzz with the drug-overdose demise of indie rock star Sarah Tweed, about whom a last-minute in-depth profile has sent fact-checkers in the neighboring office scrambling to ensure its accuracy despite the racket that has one of them (Erik Scilley as sad-sack Loren) at his wit’s end.

Audiences can be excused for wondering throughout Gloria’s HBO sitcom pilot-ready first act just what Jacobs-Jenkins intends with all this clever, cutting, laugh-packed repartee.

It’s only following Act One’s bang-up of a finale that the writer’s intentions become clear with an eight-months-later second act that brings back several of the characters we’ve gotten to know (if not love) now seeking fame and fortune while making it clear that it’s not just Baby Boomers who merit being called the “Me Generation.”

Tony winner Jacobs-Jenkins has much to say about the changing face of journalism since the advent of social media, and about a 21st-century America in which everyone believes they have a story worth telling even if it means making someone else’s their own (provided there’s a book deal and potential movie or mini-series on the horizon).

It’s meaty stuff for a writer to tackle, but (if you will pardon my continuing the football metaphor) BJJ scores a touchdown as does Chance Theater, where director Marya Mazor has elicited six absolutely sensational performances (or thirteen if you count every single character being played) from a cast of mostly fresh-out-of-college Chance newcomers.

Charismatic newcomer Martella gives us a young gay man whose innocence and optimism have been worn away by drone work, too much drinking, and the unlikelihood that the memoir he’s titled “Zine Dreams” will ever have much to say.

Forman is a sexy stunner as the venom-tongued Kendra, who makes up for her own lack of work ethic (she’s never far from the next bit of shopping on the way to the next Starbucks run) by opinionatedly bad-mouthing everyone she knows and doesn’t know.

Lock, meanwhile, goes from sullen, quietly fuming “office freak” Gloria to Dean’s initially unseen boss Nan, whose devastating Act Two monolog Lock delivers with an emotional truth Jacob-Jenkins’ script then sneakily asks us to reevaluate.

Laird and Middleton are both absolutely fabulous in three thoroughly distinct roles each (Martella and Forman each slip in a second part as well), and though Scilley plays just one role from start to finish, outside onlooker Lorin is such a consistently forceful presence that his quietly devastating final scene will have you asking yourself if it hasn’t been all about Loren all along.

Christopher Scott Murillo’s set scores high marks for office-environment realism and the ability to morph into two other distinct locales and Adriana Lámbarri’s costumes are as striking as they are character-appropriate.

Add to this Andrea Hellman’s expert lighting and Eric Backus’s equally fine sound design and you’ve got a production design that is the Chance at its regional theater best.

Jocelyn L. Buckner is dramaturg. Martin Noyes is fight director. Jordan Jones is stage manager and Jordyn Nieblas-Galvan is assistant stage manager. Casting is by Lindsay Brooks.

It’s taken almost ten years for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria to make its Orange County debut, but Chance Theater’s absolutely brilliant OC Premiere of this edgy edge-of-your-seater makes it more than worth the wait.

Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills.
www.chancetheater.com

–Steven Stanley
October 5, 2024
Photos: Doug Catiller

Tags: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Chance Theater, Orange County Theater Review