Review: Death amid the cubicles

From its downtown setting in an office building to the concerns of its characters, "The Thugs" is an urban play through and through. Yet the language of Canadian playwright Adam Bock's Obie-winning experimental thriller, which opened Friday at Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis, is not laid out on a grid, like many urban cores. Instead, the dialogue twists and turns, with suggestive turnoffs and dead-end sentences that director Steve Busa stages in a straightforward, workmanlike way.

He gets some genuinely interesting performances from the likes of Leif Jurgensen and Miriam Must. Both of those performers render quirky characters. But the production is neither scary nor gripping, which is a pity, given that the play comes with great word-of-mouth and a good cast.

That this one-act is not entirely absorbing probably has as much to do with Busa's direction as with Bock's script, which gives us some suggestive information.

In the office, seven workers, including half-a-dozen temps, do mindless legal work by the clock at three workspaces. The workplace is lorded over by Diane (Sigrid Sutter), who sternly enforces the rules: no talking, except about the job at hand, once work commences at 9 a.m.

But things are not so orderly either in the building or in the lives of the temps, who do talk. And when rumors circulate that a person has died on one of the floors of the building and that someone else may be missing on another floor, the temps fill in the gaps of their knowledge with morbid speculation.

Magic relies on us jumping to conclusions, given a set of triggering stimuli. Our brains are susceptible to suggestions and tricks from our eyes. The play aims for a similar leap in our imaginations. The production uses blackouts for scene changes, a pitched rumble for sound effect and simulated lightning and thunder to try to give us goosebumps.

But Busa's straightforward approach does not serve this type of writing well. Bock's dialogue and silences often feel like they are shadows cast by some larger, frightening thing.

It's a pity that it does not induce our imaginations to make leaps and be thrilled. The production has very real and intriguing talents, including Julie Kurtz as abused temp Daphne, Toni Trussoni as new temp Chantal and Katherine Kupiecki as Mercedes, a sort of head temp with a reputation for spying for the bosses. They are still worth seeing, if only for their potential.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390