Oct. 09--At the top of Elizabeth Irwin's "My Manana Comes," a couple of battle-scarred busboys are decompressing after a busy shift in a posh Manhattan eatery. Their mutually congratulatory war stories -- if you wanted bread, you got bread in seconds and not even a fork hit the floor -- are no different, really, from what you might hear from two journalists at the Billy Goat Tavern after a tip paid off, or a pair of lawyers at the Chicago Cut Steakhouse after a long-sought conviction, or a group of private equity partners who made the right kill.
There is the pride of a shared profession; an acknowledgment of the raw power of teamwork; the gut pleasure of a job well done.
Except there is a difference, of course. The tipped-out busboys in Irwin's play often make less than $100 per long shift -- and they get sent home if business is slow. They worry about being paid at all. And like all workers faced with a stressful workplace and a lousy culture, they become distracted, internally competitive, less innovative. Since they feel powerless there at the bottom of the restaurant food-chain, they turn on each other in the end.
Given how much time people spend in restaurants these days, there's a lack of plays about the dining business. In the case of "My Manana Comes," we're off to the side of the spot where celebrity chefs roam. We're in the side workstation -- the province of folding napkins, cutting up garnishes, polishing the silverware. The four busboys in the play come from different places -- Whalid (Dennis Garcia) is a Latino from Brooklyn; Peter (Cameron Knight) is an African-American doing his best to be a good dad; and Jorge (Victor Marana) and Pepe (Johnathan Nieves) are both Mexican immigrants who have cause to worry if someone comes around checking papers. But they're all smart, savvy, hard workers who want what we all want from our jobs: stability, creative input, a sense of forward progress.
Irwin's play is mostly a character study of these men (and they are all men) in the 21st century-workplace, where their economic fates have been tied to the fate of their employer (the busboys well know that a summer brunch shift is lousy when the clientele is off in the Hamptons) without much sharing in the upside. Hearing from busboys is a worthwhile way to spend 90 minutes of anyone's time, especially in such a carefully observed piece of writing. Those of us who have waited tables know when a writer has spent time among servers; the requisite authenticity is here.
Director Sandra Marquez's production features some very decent performances -- I thoroughly believed all four of these actors, actually, and there is real warmth to what they are doing on stage. Unfortunately, though, she misses one crucial aspect of any play set in a restaurant: pace. Once you're near a kitchen, you cannot not move quickly and anyone who has been a runner will tell you that the profession is characterized by great bursts of energy and even adrenaline. "My Manana Comes" moves so slowly throughout as to become dull to watch, even though there is nothing in the play that suggests anyone has spare time in their lives.
That lack of energy -- truly, the show could move at twice this speed -- translates into stakes that aren't near high enough to make the ending of the play, when the busboys finally decide to take some collective action, feel earned and credible. It's a shame since Marana and Knight are especially empathetic actors who've forged rich characters. I think part of the problem here is that the locale is never active enough -- you cannot tell where we are spatially, and the design, by Angela Miller, has lots of great detail, but not enough of the internal architecture of a restaurant.
The play revolves mostly around whether the busboys are going to get their "shift pay," which the owners are trying to eliminate. Surely, a top-drawer restaurant not paying its busboys at least the mandated minimum tipped-employee wage would be acting illegally. That's not to say they would not try it -- employers do all kinds of things to workers when their business is in the toilet -- but neither this play nor these incredibly smart busboys seem ever to have heard of this regulation. If you're at 66th and Madison, you at least have to pay some modicum of attention to the rules of business. For anyone in that level of restaurant real estate, ducking out on $2.13 an hour for four guys is not worth the risk.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@tribpub.com
"My Manana Comes" -- 2 stars
When: Through Nov. 8
Where: Richard Christiansen Theater at the Victory Gardens Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $25-$30 at 773-871-3000 or teatrovista.org
