The Mailroom

JHG Creative—The Gargoyle Theatre

Enormous props to this company out the gate- it’s very difficult to do a musical when you experience a total audio failure. Despite the circumstances, they pulled it together, threw in some jokes, and I had a very good time. The Mailroom, centering a group of corporate mail workers about to lose their jobs, was almost a working class call to action to demand better from the faceless corporations that oversee us. I say almost, as while the majority of the show was full of catchy songs and sticking it to the man, the solution of “That’s the best we could do, shame we still lost” left me disheartened. Maybe that was the point, but it deflated an otherwise good experience.

The cast played extremely well off each other and were obviously having fun on stage, but I found myself questioning certain decisions made. Despite the shows pleas to ignore the fact that one member of the group was a puppet, an obvious gag to the tokenization of minorities, I found it hard to when they kept bringing it up. I thought it must be coming to a head, and in a sense it did, but also felt entirely unnecessary in a show already trying to say so much. It left me wanting.

Arden Pruden