‘Tabletop’ finishes Playhouse season

Tom Titus

While most people probably channel surf or visit the bathroom during

television commercials, the creation of these pitches is a

high-tension industry all its own, and the Laguna Playhouse will take

a wry look at this strange and often-frenzied world in a

just-announced West Coast premiere.

Rob Ackerman’s comedy “Tabletop” will fill the “TBA” slot as the

seventh and final play of the season and will be staged by Andrew

Barnicle, the playhouse’s artistic director. It’s an insider’s take

on what really goes on in the world of TV advertising, and it opens

May 29.

Ackerman is a longtime New York-based property manager for

commercials who writes plays in his spare time. And, taking the

advice of authors who say “write what you know,” he’s turned his

profession into grist for a scathing comedy.

“I wrote the first draft of the play in 1991 out of the pain of

being absolutely humiliated by tabletop directors I had worked for,”

the playwright said. “The truth about these small shops is there’s an

incredible amount of sadism and brutality gong on. They’re like a

small dictatorship -- with not many phone calls and little access to

the outside world.”

After nine years of professional critiques and rewrites,

“Tabletop” has become less a depiction of a ruthless tabletop

director with his helpless underlings and more a complex, subtle

production where “villains have reasons for their villainy and

audience sympathies shift between the characters,” Ackerman declared.

New York critics have applauded. The Times said that “‘Tabletop’

encompasses idealism, compromise and illusion in an all-too-real

world of mass manipulation.” The Post called it “the best new

American play in quite a while,” and New York Magazine called it

“acidly funny.”

“Tabletop” is described as a frenzied comedy that takes place in

he pressure-cooker environment of an advertising company specializing

in high-end tabletop imagery. This insular enclave of fabulous fakery

is populated by egomaniacal artists, an autocratic director,

demanding clients, second-guessing technicians and naive wannabes.

During the 90-minute play, the actors will take the audience

through several actual tabletop re-hoots of a “pour shot” and a

“heroic beauty shot” (wherein the swirl-topped drink is slowly

rotated and raised before the camera. If “Lost in Translation” comes

to mind, one shouldn’t be too surprised, except this is all in

English.

The Laguna production will play through June 27 at the playhouse,

606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach, and tickets may be ordered by

calling the theater at (949) 497-2787.