The Receptionist tickets

Experience the return of Obie Award winner Adam Bock's acclaimed dark comedy. A fitting parable for our times, The Receptionist plays for a limited run this spring, starting April 15 at Second Stage Theater. Second Stage is known for remounting beloved plays and giving them a fresh life, which is what director Sarah Benson (Teeth, Fairview) is doing with her new staging of this hilarious and eerie play.

In The Receptionist off Broadway — “a poisoned Post-it note of a play” (The New York Times) — it's business as usual at the Northeast Office. The friendly receptionist juggles various tasks, makes coffee, and gabs with coworkers — until a stranger comes to visit. That newcomer, from the Central Office, has a specific need, turning this office comedy upside down and revealing the insidious nature of obedience, order, and bureaucracy.

"Bock is thinking about the extent to which moral responsibility should be shared by those far removed from the so-called deciders," Theatermania wrote of the play's original run. "Can the littlest cog in the societal wheel claim immunity? Bock makes his uncompromising statement in a piece that falls somewhere between Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery and a Twilight Zone episode — with a soupcon of Franz Kafka thrown in."

The "chilling contemporary allegory" (Theatermania) about power and the jobs we live out originally premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York and now gets a second life for a new generation to experience. Known for his idiosyncratic and pointed, funny voice, Bock has received many accolades over his decades-long career. He's received the Obie Award and Guggenheim Fellowship and has also been nominated for multiple Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards.