Miamiartzine's rave review for Lobby Hero helps Alliance close out its most successful season yet!

by Roger Martin atca on November 20, 2011


It's a fascinatingly cynical piece, Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero, with its moral dilemmas and flawed characters, and the passion poured into this production by The Alliance Theatre Lab makes this play everything it should be. The terrific cast is led by Mark Della Ventura as the almost professional goofball, hanging by a thread, security guard, Jeff. He mans the lobby desk in a New York City apartment house. At first glance you think, oh, Della Ventura's been typecast; he can play goofy just standing still. But there's a lot more hidden behind the sunny smile; he knows he's a loser, he knows he betrays his friends; he knows he's lonely and desperate and he knows his silly jokes are featherweight manhole covers for his inadequacies.

David Sirois is Bill, a tough, conniving NYC uniformed cop who's been around just long enough to think he's ruling. He's already nailed his rookie partner and blithely leaves her waiting in the apartment house lobby with Jeff while he spreads the joy with his lady friend on an upper floor. He's this close to his gold badge and he'll do anything to get it. Anything but obey the rules. Sirois's Bill is a quiet thug with deadly authority. He can't spell nice.

Dawn, Bill's probationary partner in the car and on the horizontal, is Anne Chamberlain and she's every bit of layered as Della Ventura and Sirois. Not a lady to be scorned. In fact, probably not a lady at all. And remarkably fast with a nightstick. And rabid vengeance.

And then there's Mcley Lafrance playing William, Captain of Security Officers, shirt and manners starched into rigid expectations and willing to fire Jeff time and time again. And of course he has a brother who's a bad boy and needs William, who never saw a rule he didn't adore, to lie to the cops on his behalf.

Dilemma: should William risk ruin to save his brother? Dilemma: should Dawn report Bill's on duty leg overs? If she keeps quiet, Bill won't testify against her for needlessly whacking a perp on the head with her nightstick.

Dilemma: should Bill interfere on William's behalf? Dilemma: should Jeff tell all he knows about William, Bill and Dawn?

Director Adalberto J. Acevedo has mounted a faultless Lobby Hero. The play works as both comedy and drama and Acevedo's actors are more than up to every nuance in the excellent script.

Acevedo also designed the nicely realistic set and Howard Ferre designed the first-class sound and lighting.

Lobby Hero continues the Alliance Theatre Lab's string of highly successful productions. It's good to see a small theatre consistently hitting the high marks.