STAGE REVIEW : ‘Palladium’: Dial ‘S’ for a Winning Swindle at Court Theatre

Lenore Carlson was on the money when she subtitled her play, “Palladium Is Moving,” “A Nasty, Vicious Comedy.” But surely her tongue was in her cheek as she scrawled those words. Half the fun of this “Palladium” at the Court Theatre in Hollywood is watching a sleazy bunch of telemarketers get theirs.

The other half is watching them get each other on the way to getting theirs.

The idea isn’t entirely new to the stage. David Mamet came up with something like it in “Glen Garry Glenn Ross” and so did Keith Reddin--at least as the jumping-off point for his “Life During Wartime” which closed Sunday at the La Jolla Playhouse. Carlson’s intent is a touch less serious than Mamet’s or Reddin’s (she does call it a comedy), but it’s a fiercely funny epitaph to the gods of swindle, written in hot ink and stemming (according to the author’s program note) from some real-life encounters with the breed.

Her setting is simple: a “phone room” operation, somewhere in the vast open spaces of Greater Los Angeles. Four telemarketing cowboys are riding herd on their preys, reaching out and touching their someones, bilking them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars with a mere turn of the dial. Make that thousands of dollars. This is not a high-class operation.

It’s Nick’s operation (Carmen Argenziano), a peripatetic leader of the pack who is not happy unless everyone is busy. His “team” includes a fast-talking sleaze named Freddie (Gregg Henry) who is into this to support a coke habit; a prickly character named Brad (Glenn Plummer) for whom the telephone squeeze is just one of several enterprises, and a rookie named Malcolm (Anthony Starke).

Malcolm is at once the most and least interesting--least to the audience, most to the boiler room veterans who can’t quite believe how wet this kid is behind the ears. Ostensibly, he is an unemployed actor trying to make ends meet between jobs. But is he cut out for the roughness of this trade?

Carlson’s play has a straightforward spine that eventually pivots on the suspense of pondering that last question. For a long time, plot is not the issue. Interaction is. She has a talent for muscular, salty language that would make Mamet proud. And she fills in the blanks of each character she paints not quite by the numbers.

There are fewer surprises in who these people are than in how vividly this hand-picked cast brings them to life. Argenziano’s Nick is a typically driven, coiled, unfocused, sometimes hysterical boss, who is not happy if he isn’t having a knockdown-drag-out with someone. Henry’s unkempt Freddie is vulgarity incarnate--a loud, oily, scared, mean man whose blow-by-blow description of how he likes to live is hilarious and repulsive.

So far so good. Most of the first half is designed to humorously establish the noxious environment of the room. The real suspense walks in with Plummer’s Brad--a bristling sliver of a guy, watchful as a cat and lethal as a stiletto. You don’t mess with him, although Nick tries to and, to a lesser degree, so does Malcolm--the famous Malcolm, the fish in the wrong pond about to be devoured by these sharks. Starke brings a tremulous innocence and vulnerability to the role that eventually explode in ways one only partially anticipates.

It’s a raw, precipitous tumble to the play’s conclusion over hairpin turns.

James Carhart has supplied a neutral office interior, brightly lit by Brian Gale. Lisa James’ vigorous staging meets this material head on. It’s direct and punchy, though one might wish for a quicker start out of the gate. That problem, however, is as much the writer’s as the director’s. Carlson’s play, like a roller coaster, is slow to build in its pull to the top of the curve, but swift enough once it’s unleashed on the downslope.

Carlson diligently keeps the nasty and vicious going to the end, but to her credit, the comedy, which has a surprisingly moral outcome, never sinks into self-righteousness. If you’re looking for new insights on the subject of sleaze or greed, however, you won’t find them here. “Palladium” is to be taken at face value. It may not be searing satire, but it is clever, gutsy entertainment whose well-observed spoofing makes mincemeat of some of today’s all-too-recognizable realities.