Philly Fringe 2018: Trey Lyford's 'The Accountant' (third review)

And with good reason: rarely have I felt so stultified sitting in a theater as I did throughout this bloated, self-indulgent, and utterly pointless portrait of an anonymous office factotum. Lyford, who has displayed talent as both an actor and deviser in past works, has nothing original to say about the droning banality of corporate culture. Instead, he offers something more like a parody of experimental, nonnarrative theater.

Staged in Christ Church’s cavernous performance space, The Accountant feels like anything but a sincere portrayal of the quiet desperation that accompanies tedious jobs. Eric Novak’s set looks too conspicuously messy, a deliberately manicured portrait of chaos. Robin Stamey’s dimly flickering lighting evokes overfamiliar tropes of workplace drudgery, seen everywhere fromThe Man in the Gray Flannel Suit to Being John Malkovich. Tara Webb’s costumes — gray on gray on gray — mean to communicate the crushing blandness of the central character’s position but are merely uninspired.

Lyford’s performance suffers similarly. He appears at his desk, shuffles some papers, and sits in the stifling quiet for what feels like half an eternity. We learn what from this, exactly?

I imagine he intends to communicate the oppressive isolation felt by many in the workplace and to show how crushing repetition can rob people of their individual spark. But Lyford’s physical performance leans too heavily on caricature and overexaggeration; we never sense any layers beneath the nameless sad sack yearning to break free.

I'll go on

Krapp’s Last Tape gets name-checked as an inspiration, but despite an overly cute bit of business with a rotting banana, few corollaries between that classic and this catastrophe emerge. Instead, we get something closer to Glengarry Glen Ross in the form of The Accountant’s abusive boss, played with growling overstatement by Ben Bass.

Again, we plunge into a pool of total stereotype, the office alpha preying on the aging, wounded weakling. Bass delivers the most substantial stretch of speech in the piece: a monologue about his purposely smelly breath. I wish I were kidding.

Coralie Holum Lyford, Lyford’s daughter, appears as an apparition, displaying genuine comfort onstage. I assume she’s meant to represent the accountant’s daughter, but the relationship is never clearly defined.

Accountant and girl crumple up the stacks of paper and engage in a mock snowball fight, then dance with joyful abandon around the detritus. Perhaps a greater sense of character or relationship could elevate this section, but as it stands, it’s trite and gimmicky.

If the evening has one genuinely successful component, it’s Cole Kamen-Green’s plaintive score, which he performs live on trumpet. The music develops from sputtering, barely audible taps to mournful licks and wails, imbued with a sweet sadness that’s badly needed but otherwise missing from the piece. An eerie prerecorded soundscape communicates more existential anguish than anything onstage.

The play whimpers to an uneventful end. Maybe that’s the point, but across its interminable 80 minutes, I detected little commentary beneath the cranked-up surface of performative mundanity. I hope my husband forgives me for foisting this meaningless exercise on him, but I can’t guarantee I’ll forgive Trey Lyford for wasting my time.

To read Mark Cofta's review, click here.

To read Helen Walsh's review, click here.