Theater review: ‘Next Window, Please’ at Lonny Chapman Theatre

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In ‘Next Window, Please,’ playwright Doug Haverty deposits several working-woman archetypes into a warm-hearted dramedy steeped in the current economic malaise. As such, the dividends provided by this glossy Group Rep production will likely accrue interest for average customers. Returns may be leaner for more demanding examiners.

Set in the Santa Monica branch of a bank on the verge of merger and layoffs, ‘Next Window’ has much to its credit, starting with actors Stephanie Colet, Gina Yates, Bianca Gisselle, Shelby Kocee and Trisha Hershberger, who are all adept, vivid and appealing as the surviving-from-paycheck-to-paycheck tellers who face termination.

Kady Douglas as their calmly beleaguered supervisor and Chris Wolfe as the junior executive trainee with a corporate agenda are agreeably understated, though their character assets are frozen by a schematic, compound narrative that doesn’t prohibit our foreseeing its logical outcome, under the over-attenuated direction of Richard Alan Woody.

Haverty has a knack for charged exchanges and zingers, but, as often with new plays, he tries to say too much, in too many ways. The interstitial monologues that underscore each woman’s dilemma, for example, are frequently arresting, perhaps the evening’s best writing. Yet they overreach, with more than one revelation addressing deeper issues than Haverty’s sitcom-tinged account can really explore.

On balance, it’s pleasant entertainment, sleekly appointed, certain to bring in the crowds. Still, without textual reanalysis, ‘Next Window’ seems destined to wind up downsized into either a cable television pilot or the libretto of a populist musical about endearing cashiers.

-- David C. Nichols

‘Next Window, Please,’ Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Also, 7 p.m. Aug. 21, 8 p.m. Aug. 25. Ends Sept. 17. $15-$22. (818) 700-4878 or www.thegrouprep.com. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.