SERVICE SECTOR
Theater Oobleck’s new late-night offering, Service Sector, eloquently and hilariously illustrates this point by turning reality on its head. Instead of a world where home deliveries are a rarity, this play offers a world in which any home service you can imagine, from dog walkers to Latin teachers to coffee stewards, is available with a single phone call. And it’s service with an obsequious smile too.
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The man who receives all these services is Mr. Bonkowski (Dave Boo-Khaloom), a well-to-do River Forest home owner who simply wants to enjoy a nice cup of coffee in his comfortable kitchen. Unfortunately, all of the workers he’s hired show up on the same morning, trying to take care of his every need, from routing out his backed-up sewer to locating his daughter’s missing contact lens. These workers are so well trained at accommodating the customer that they barrel forward with their duties, grins plastered on their faces, unaware that they’re slowly turning Mr. Bonkowski’s carefully ordered life into chaos.
Isaacson and Anderson could not more skillfully execute the dozen or so roles they each play. Both bring great subtlety and nuance to the various stages and types of servitude; as a result Service Sector has a rich, varied texture. And Boo-Khaloom makes a charming victim, maintaining his suburban normalcy for as long as possible. He understands that Mr. Bonkowski must be void of personality, a kind of blank comic everyman, to be a proper foil for the exaggerated characters around him. In essence Boo-Khaloom does his best to throw all the focus on the other actors–and when was the last time you saw a playwright perform so generously in his own play?
