The Receptionist

New reviews are being saved, but they are not currently displaying on this page. We are upgrading our system, so while your feedback is secure, it won't appear publicly until our updates are complete.

This show has not been reviewed yet

Positive

Mixed

Negative

Members say

Be the first to review

About the Show

An office comedy where a routine workday unravels after an unexpected corporate visit.

Set in a small regional office, the play follows a dutiful receptionist whose days are defined by answering phones, making coffee, and exchanging workplace gossip. The office’s steady routine is disrupted when a representative from the Central Office arrives without warning, triggering a shift in behavior and priorities among the staff. As policies, authority, and obedience come into focus, the story traces how ordinary workplace interactions intersect with systems of power and accountability, examining the mechanics of bureaucracy and individual participation within it.

Critic Reviews (13)

"Bock's fundamental inquiry into a person's responsibility in an amoral organization is too loose to hit any target."
Read more

"It seeks to make your brain buzz about the world and, importantly, your interconnected place in it. It gets the job done."
Read more

"4/5 Stars! While this Second Stage revival is not as darkly funny as it should be early on, director Sarah Benson does a better job with the chilling second half...hat sense of unease lingers."
Read more

"The rising friction between the banal and the appalling makes room for some solid creepy-comic performances...Bock hasn’t written a particularly meaty play."
Read more

"This Receptionist has been more enjoyable than unsettling...what once left me shaken now only left me mildly stirred."
Read more

"First staged in 2007 (by Joe Mantello) at Manhattan Theatre Club, The Receptionist packed a gut punch, beginning as a light workplace comedy and ending in the unthinkable. Nineteen years later, it looks much thinner, more like an old Twilight Zone episode than a stinging comment on the normalization of torture."
Read more

"The Receptionist craftily lulls the audience into a sense of complacency. While the setting and characters are recognizable from situation comedies, Bock slyly exposes the nefariousness that lurks within the familiar and mundane."
Read more

"Lacking the stylistic finesse to give depth to its surface banalities, 'The Receptionist' mostly makes you feel as if you’ve been put on a lengthy hold."
Read more