Shoplifters Alma (Jayne Houdyshell) and Phyllis (Jenna Sokolowski) vs. store security guards Dom (Adi Stein) and Otto (Delaney Williams). Photo: Teresa Wood.
By DCist Contributor Anya van Wagtendonk
Wandering the overstuffed aisles of a big-box store gives can be nightmare fuel, but the imposing towers of boxes that make up the set of The Shoplifters make a trip to Costco look soothing by comparison. Ken MacDonald’s staggering design jams the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage to the gills with cardboard boxes. Vertigo-inducing towers of boxes stretch, Babel-like, to the heavens; boxes dangle from the rafters like stalactites, and others lay open, hypnotizing with their wares.
Within this consumerist hellscape, Otto (Delaney Williams), a store security guard just trying to get through his last day on the job, interrogates Alma (Jayne Houdyshell), an exasperated old woman who, along with her nervous friend Phyllis (Jenna Sokolowski), refuses to admit to stealing the sixteen-ounce ribeyes found under the women’s skirts. We soon learn that Alma is not a first-time shoplifter, but this is the first time she’s been apprehended, thanks to Otto’s rookie replacement, Dom (Adi Stein).
The comedy’s conceit is in some ways reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch. While Alma continues to maintain her innocence, even as she pulls brand-new Kleenex tissues out of her purse, and Otto blusters away at her impenitence, one can’t help but be reminded of the famous dead parrot sketch. That customer-shopkeeper interaction — where a pet store owner repeatedly insists that a clearly-dead parrot is merely resting — escalates to breathlessly absurd heights, as do the interactions in Shoplifters. But where the Python sketch ends suddenly on the grounds of being much too silly, Shoplifters trudges on, leaping past mere absurdism and landing somewhere in the realm of ludicrous.
This failing is partly to do with the tools of the play’s humor. Fast-paced to the point of hysteria, the actors, much like the plot, zing haphazardly around the stage, at times over-reactive and shrill. The dialogue is so snappy that the Borscht Belt-style punchlines land as subtly as bombs, and Alma, ostensibly the most nuanced character in the play, is largely relegated to the tired trope of Dirty-Mouthed Old Lady.
The show really starts to merit eye-rolling when, amidst the frenzy and the zany zingers, it strives for grave profundity, and raises questions about consumerism, ownership, God, and justice with all the insight of a college sophomore stumbling across economic philosophy for the first time. These moments come so often that it’s generally unclear what, exactly, the playwright (Morris Panych, who also directs) is trying to probe (the marketing of junk food to children? Conditions facing the elderly? Capitalism?!), besides capital “S” Society. Fitting all these Big Ideas into 100 minutes also leads to some very silly segues, like when Otto asks Alma why she took the steaks. “You wanna talk about stealing?” she asks. “Who stole the American dream?” Cue Meaningful Animal Metaphor.
Still, ‘Shoplifters’ provides some genuinely funny moments, with sight gags that could be at home in a sketch comedy performance. Sokolowski’s Phyllis swears she stole nothing before pulling, one by one, half a birthday party — cake mix, candles, plastic crown and all — from the hidden depths of her skirt.
Stein has a gift for physical comedy: a rookie Rent-a-Cop swimming in his two-sizes-too-big uniform may be something of a cliché, but Stein swims endearingly. His character, struggling to find purpose in what has heretofore been a comically pathetic existence, has turned to dogma, both in his new job maintaining law and order, and as a recent convert to Christianity. The play’s bouts of God-talk are heavy-handed, to put it lightly, but Stein delightfully captures the inherent awkwardness of youthful orthodoxy trying to match their demeanor — now playing The Authoritative Cop, now The Charismatic Missionary — to the earnestness of their beliefs.
Stein is a local talent, and, coupled with Houdyshell’s unsurprising command of the stage — she’s a Tony-nominated Broadway star — the two keep the play engaging, even as the plot starts and sputters. Thanks to these performances, The Shoplifters offers enough entertainment for an evening on D.C.’s waterfront—just don’t expect it to steal your heart.
The Shoplifters runs through October 19 at Arena Stage. Tickets, $45-100 ,are available here.
