A Chicago publisher fights for survival in Regina Taylor’s STOP. RESET. (photo by Joan Marcus)
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 29, $75
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org
Playwright and actress Regina Taylor (I’ll Fly Away, Crowns) examines social and technological change through a literary lens in the Afrofuturistic stop. reset. The contemporary drama takes place inside Alexander Ames Chicago Black Book Publishers, where times are tough, especially with the growing popularity of ebooks. Company founder Ames (Carl Lumbly) is an old-fashioned publisher who still treasures the look, touch, and smell of a physical book, but the firm’s financial situation has forced him to cut one staff member from his few remaining employees. He meets with each one alone, letting them tell their personal and professional stories while he also shares his, which is dominated by the loss of his son a few years earlier. One by one, Deb (Michi Barall), Chris (Teagle F. Bougere), Jan (Latanya Richardson Jackson), and Tim (Donald Sage Mackay) make their case why they should stay and someone else should go. Meanwhile, J (Ismael Cruz Córdova), the young hip-hop janitor, just does his own thing, oblivious to what is going on around him — or perhaps not quite. Taylor, who wrote stop. reset. as part of the Residency Five program at the Signature Theatre, never quite gets past the clichéd aspects of her characters and plot points, letting Neil Patel’s inventive set, which includes a clever elevator, glassed-in offices, a large window through which a fierce snowstorm can be seen, and, projections (by Shawn Sagady) of quotations from Ralph Ellison and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., overwhelm the play. The production does have its moments, but various transitions, as well as the ending, are too confusing, leaving too much unresolved.