Tina (Kate Miller), Connor (Evan Klein), and Johnny (Dan Patrick Brady) concoct a blackmail scheme in The Bathroom Attendant (photo by Scott Fetterman)
THE BATHROOM ATTENDANT
124 Bank Street Theater
124 Bank St.
Through August 30, $38.10
sparkplugproductions.com
I’ve previously written about my anxieties around public bathrooms and theatrical productions several times, from a show at SoHo Rep in which they waited for me to finish my business to being walked in on prior to a play in a hotel room in which one of the actors made actual use of the facilities, with the door open.
So I absolutely had to see a new play called The Bathroom Attendant, at 124 Bank Street Theater through August 30.
On line to check in, I decided to go to the bathroom; there was a sign saying “Private” on the door, so I asked other people if they knew if we could use this, and one woman said yes, she had just seen someone exit it. I slowly reached for the handle and, feeling that it was unlocked, opened the door — to find a young man sitting on the bowl, not exactly happy that everyone on line could see him.
I closed the door and apologized profusely, completely commiserating with him, and used a second bathroom instead, making sure to lock the door.
I was somewhat disappointed to learn that the play does not take place in a can, and the protagonist’s job is mentioned only a few times: He works part-time as an attendant in the Mob Museum rest room. (There really is such an institution in downtown Vegas.)
Written by Tom Kelly (Bleached Blonde Betty, The Gangster and the Busboy) and directed by Andrew Block (Small Engine Repair, Fat Cat Killers), The Bathroom Attendant is set in a ramshackle apartment in the Dean Martin Houses, not exactly the luxury condo tower known as the Martin on Dean Martin Dr. It’s a sad-sack room with a torn-up icky yellow couch, a microwave, a sorry excuse for a stove, a ridiculously old television playing an episode of the late 1970s series Vegas starring Robert Urich as a PI catching the bad guys in glittering Sin City, and a view of the Strip through dirty windows. Designed by Scott Fetterman, it’s a claustrophobic nightmare, about as lousy as it gets. On the back wall is a poster of Johnny “the Street Fighter” Knight from the 1984 Golden Gloves finals at Madison Square Garden, a constant reminder to the apartment’s resident of his long-ago glory days, of what might have been.
Bambi (Mari Blake) is not quite a femme fatale in gritty crime thriller (photo by Scott Fetterman)
It’s August 2018, but Johnny (Dan Patrick Brady) is still stuck in the past, unable to gain any kind of foothold; he’s three months behind on his rent, is in debt to a local mob, and swills Mike’s Hard Lemonade that he stole from another apartment. His only friend is Tina (Kate Miller), a former porno star who is now part of the evangelical community, focused on helping young women in trouble; she is currently trying to save a teenager named Jade who is being abused by her drunk junkie father. Johnny is shocked when a sixteen-year-old boy named Connor Donahue (Evan Klein) knocks on his door; Connor is the nephew of one of Johnny’s best friends from his Brooklyn days.
Decked out in Mets gear, Connor is in Vegas with his father but has brought along memorabilia for Johnny to sign; he has heard all the old stories from his father about Johnny’s prowess in the 1980s.
He also has an ulterior motive; the previous night, he videotaped Mets superstar Mickey Logan, potentially the first-ever $500 million player, viciously beating up a teenage girl, Bambi (Mari Blake). (The incident recalls Super Bowl winner Ray Rice, who was caught on video attacking his fiancée in 2014, and Sean “Puffy” Combs assaulting his girlfriend in 2016.) Connor, who learned about the underworld by bingeing The Sopranos, has already pitched the video to the National Enquirer and TMZ but believes he could make a much better score by blackmailing Logan, with Johnny’s assistance. Tina asks in as well and they set out to pull off the big haul, although Logan’s right-hand man, Marcus (Jon Krupp), has other ideas, ready to do whatever is necessary to protect Logan.
At more than two hours (including intermission), The Bathroom Attendant is too long and feels far out of time; it starts slowly, has a more gripping middle section, but then devolves into convoluted plot devices and huge plot holes. The acting is hit or miss, the staging gets confusing, and the sound effects (cellphones, barking dogs) are not only way too loud but seem to come from all over the theater, which makes no sense. I did care about a few of the characters, but others have inexplicable motives and are in need of heavy tweaking.
You don’t always know who to root for when you really start thinking about it, which is a good thing, and the show contains some excellent crime-thriller elements, but the finale goes off the deep end, throwing in too many new facts late in the game. It feels more like an episode from a 1970s television series, like Mannix, Cannon, Baretta, or, well, Vegas, where you can get away with various shortcomings, but that’s not the case with live theater.
In the meantime, please double check that you’ve locked the bathroom door.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]