Emma, the heroine and narrator of “View of the Dome,” is a decent, well-meaning campaign volunteer who (literally) wants to sit at the big table with the big boys.
Instead, she is snubbed by the friend she is helping to run for Congress, and she is shuffled off to a side table in a fancy Washington, D.C., restaurant, removed from the important wheeling and dealing.
Infuriated by the pettiness of this injustice, she sets out to cause a little mischief, and, in so doing, becomes involved in a whirlwind of deceit, blackmail and all-around knavery, Washington style.
As Emma at last realizes, maybe it’s not so important to sit at the big table after all.
In unfolding this modern comic morality play, playwright Theresa Rebeck is sometimes too pat in her setups, too broad in her caricature. But she’s clever, slick and on target in her satire much of the time; she has the incalculable advantage of good timing in her barbs at sexual and political hypocrisy in the nation’s capital; she is sweetly on the side of truth, justice and the American Way. And, in director Sandy Shinner’s staging at Victory Gardens Theater, she’s blessed with a very sleek, knowing production.
Jeff Bauer, the scenic designer, deserves major credit for the play’s smooth, swift trajectory. His colonnaded setting, with the Congressional dome in the background, has only one scenic element, a square black pedestal; but, inventively, it serves as restaurant table, television set, saloon bar and speaker’s dais.
Except for the Emma of Lisa Tejero, an actress able to suggest slyness, sexiness and innocence in the same person, the play’s actors takes on several roles, and they do all of them well.
Dev Kennedy is seen principally as the cliche-spouting Congressional candidate. Jeff Parker is his turncoat campaign manager (and Emma’s boyfriend); Joe Van Slyke is an unctuous sleazemaster of the far right; Meg Thalken is a hard, bitchy political strategist; and Rob Riley is the insatiable Senator who beds down Emma.
Also appearing magically and most efficiently as waiter, reporter and newscaster is Jason Lee.
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“View of the Dome”
When: Through April 19
Where: Victory Gardens Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: 773-871-3000
