"What We're Up Against" Review in SF Chronicle

What We're Up Against: Comedy. By Theresa Rebeck. Directed by Loretta Greco. Through March 6. Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, S.F. One hour, 50 minutes. $20-$60. (415) 441-8822. www.magictheatre.org.

Forget the glass ceiling. The walls and even the drafting tables are made of glass at the misogynistic architectural firm in Theresa Rebeck's "What We're Up Against." But the doorless offices of Skip Mercier's slick set symbolize an old boy's ethic that runs deeper than sexism. At this office, the most important product is jockeying for position.

That can be a potent theatrical gambit, particularly as expressed in the clipped, obscenity-laden and comically semi-articulate forays in Rebeck's more Mamet-ian dialogue. It's also something of a limitation in the entertaining, at times provocative but unfulfilling Magic Theatre world premiere that opened Wednesday.

Perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise, given the high level of anticipation generated by a new play by Rebeck, whose "Mauritius" electrified Magic audiences two years ago. "What" is a full-length play based on an eight-minute scene she wrote many years ago. Despite some terrific dialogue, well-honed performances and the expertly orchestrated stagings of Artistic Director Loretta Greco, it still seems limited by its origins.

That one-act, now the opening scene, bristles with promise. It's a crisp, pregnant gripe-fest between Warren David Keith's slightly sodden, outraged Stu, the firm's manager, and Rod Gnapp's focused Ben, who's heading up their biggest commission, a lucrative shopping mall expansion.

Stu is livid about the "perfidy" of the new woman, Eliza, who deceived him into praising one of her designs by passing it off as a male colleague's work. Ben, who has no use for women in the office, is too keen an opportunist not to realize that Eliza may have solved the problem that's holding up the whole project.

Rebeck expands those first ideas enticingly in her first act. Her Eliza is as obnoxious as she is sympathetic, depicted by Sarah Nealis as a seething bundle of furious frustration and extreme youthful arrogance. We already know that her rants about sexism are justified. Her colleagues quickly establish that her faith in her superiority is no less accurate.

Janice (Pamela Gaye Walker), the one other woman at the firm, is a go-along-to-get-along placeholder of no discernable merit. Weber (an insidiously eager James Wagner), the "golden boy" new hire who gets favorable treatment, is defined in bright monologues of art-speak babble as smoke screens for his lack of ideas.

Everyone but Eliza is obsessed with office politics and getting credit. Only Ben, who emerges as Eliza's equally prickly complement, seems as concerned with the actual work - or even to understand what's involved. When his explosive temper finally erupts, Gnapp's brilliantly modulated performance turns the blistering rant into a showstopper.

Where "What" is most enticing is not so much in its depiction of sexism - which is a given - as in Rebeck's sharp portraits of the ways people key off a word to manipulate or betray their workmates. Much of this dialogue shares the keen ear of classic David Mamet (even to the use of his con man's "tell"), but Rebeck doesn't succeed as well in making her workplace emblematic of larger social forces.

She seems to want to depict a corporate culture that stifles all creativity. But as well as "What" riffs off that first scene, it doesn't add much to it.

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