Will Pullen and Katie Finneran Photo by Joan Marcus

For most of its eighty-minute run time, The Receptionist masquerades as a benign period comedy. The play is set during a pre-cellphone, pre-#MeToo time in a corporate office waiting area in which the stultifying institutional hum is periodically jolted by a ringing phone and the occasional piercing screech of an incoming fax. The scenic design by dots and lighting by Stacey Derosier and Bailey Costa perfectly capture the efficiently modular and sterile workspace environment with uncompromising fluorescents overhead. (Bray Poor's sound design effectively contributes to the atmosphere.)

Beverly Wilkins (Katie Finneran) is the sole administrative assistant in the Northeast branch of a regional firm, and this is her fiefdom. She seamlessly shifts from gossiping about friends and co-workers to supercilious department management, working her domineering desk phone with the dexterity of a concert pianist. Apparently, amid the routine there has also been a rash of pen disappearances, and she keeps a vigilant eye on the limited inventory in her holder, especially when Lorraine Taylor (Mallori Johnson), a business associate, lingers near her desk.

The room's temperature spikes with the arrival of Martin Dart (Will Pullen), a handsome emissary from the central office. Mr. Dart is there to meet with Northeast's supervisor Edward Raymond (Nael Nacer), who is suspiciously absent, but the women promptly and hilariously deploy their charm offensive. Discussions about Lorraine's narcissistic boyfriend and Beverly's spendthrift husband evaporate as the women attempt to out-flirt each other.

The play takes a very dark turn when Mr. Raymond eventually shows up, and we have an inkling of the syndicate's grisly enterprise, and the menacing intentions of Mr. Dart's supposed informal visit. To his credit, though, Bock's script masterfully sets up the tonal shift (with a little help from Enver Chakartash, whose business-casual-chic costumes includes conspicuously blood-red socks for Mr. Dart). The evening begins with a prologue in which Mr. Raymond, sitting in a claustrophobic cell that could be an interrogation chamber, explains his preferred method of killing a fish mercifully: "I cut the gills and I hold it in the water of the stream and bleed it out." Justifying his eating of the dead fish, he ominously adds, "And that's ok. Because everything out there is eating something."

Ostensibly aware of the company's savage operations, Beverly, blithely attending to organizing, filing, and shredding documents, represents the banality of evil, and Finneran is sensational in the role. In the production that premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2007, Jane Houdyshell was a matronly, quirky, truly compelling Beverly and made an indelible impression. In his Talkin' Broadway review, Matthew Murray wrote that Houdyshell "displays an artist's palette of colors, becoming ever more vivid and surprising as her life dissolves into black and white around her."

Finneran takes a decidedly different approach to the role. Her Beverly is coquettish and preening, and in her dealings with Lorraine, she is preening as if to indicate that with a little more education and a different set of life circumstances, she could be higher up on the bureaucratic food chain. Clad in vibrant pink and maroon, she is initially a striking presence, but as she confronts her complicity in the business dealings, her vitality fades into the joyless and muted hues of the office walls.

The rest of the cast is also in fine form. As Lorraine, Johnson is a perfect foil for the officious receptionist. She amusingly captures the character who is full of self-importance but seems to spend most of her time at work finding ways to not work. Pullen is appropriately sinister, worrying about his child with a penchant for eating Play-Doh but subtly carrying out horrors that are a part of his job. Nacer's Raymond is cool and affable in the opening moments of the play, but he skillfully embodies the panic and fear that sets in when punishable infractions have been discovered.

The Receptionist craftily lulls the audience into a sense of complacency. While the setting and characters are recognizable from situation comedies, Bock slyly exposes the nefariousness that lurks within the familiar and mundane.