Dot Gone at the 24th Street Theater

Los Angeles is such a movie town, and I'm such a movie fan, there's rarely an opportunity to take in some actual live theater. Going to an independent theater in LA can be very rewarding, when you find some small theater company filled with talented unknowns struggling to survive in a shrinking market. Most of the time, you wind up with painfully self-serious movie stars-in-training workshopping their favorite Chekov monologue on the hopes that they get that big "CSI:NY" callback. Or, you know, whatever atrocious touring musical is opening at the Ahmanson.



But I did get a chance to see the very funny new comedy "Dot Gone," opening THIS VERY NIGHT at the 24th Street Theater near USC. My friend Ray appears in the show, the story of the brief rise and free fall of upstart search engine Ummm.com, so I got a chance to see an early sneak preview.

The actors did a full run-through of the show, in costume, with all the lights and stagecraft and everything for the full show, but I feel like it was actually some kind of final dress rehearsal. Ray had said it would be a chance to "catch the show for free," and I assumed that it would be like a critics performance, or a show just for everyone's friends and family, or something. No, it was actually just a casual kind of run-through.

I got used to it quickly, but it was a little strange to see a play performed in an otherwise empty theater. At first, I feel like I laughed a bit louder than I normally would have, to compensate for the relatively quiet surroundings. I also contemplated, mainly during intermission, that being nearly the only one to watch the performance of a play is a fairly unique experience in terms of the arts. It would be like seeing someone paint something before immediately destroying the canvas. Even if other artists came along and painted the same thing nearly identically, you still enjoyed an exclusive look at a piece of art that no one else will ever see.

Interesting...

Anyway, as for the play itself, it's really quite good, very funny and spot-on about awkward workplace tension. Seen entirely from the setting of the office conference room, Dylan Bailey, Joni Efflandt, Keith Ferguson, Jon-Barrett Ingels, Chris Mock, Jeremy Schaeg , Raymond Manukay, Melody Mooney portray the first and last employees of Umm, a search engine that enters the game a bit too late to steal the business away from Yahoo and Google. I'd love to tell you who's who, but I don't know.

At first, unbridled enthusiasm and epic ambitions rule the day. But it's not long before increasing demands by the management, interpersional antagonism, anxiety about the future and the realities of the marketplace intrude on the dream that was Ummm. Though they have a lot of fun with the outsized personalities that make up the executive board, writer/director Max Cabot and his ensemble, to their credit, don't ever resort to scorn or mockery.

In a way, as a small company of actors and artists, they probably relate to the dauntless exuberance of Ummm's early days more than most. Attention is paid not only to how the business frays and falls apart, but to how the tenuous friendships dissolve amidst the fiduciary strain. Disappointment slips slowly into anger, co-worker's minor quirks become unbearable character flaws and the masks that people wear in the workplace to seem professional begin to slip away.

It's funny but it's also sympathetic, which is rare in stories about the dot coms and the Internet bubble. We tend to look back on these failed ventures as morality tales, stories about companies that deserved to go out of business because they were frivolous or greedy or poorly-managed. And, of course, Ummm.com is all of these things. The employees are more focused on giving one another silly titles and making margaritas than they are on work, the managers love to have meetings but never solve problems, and everyone seems concerned more about the upcoming IPO prospects than about becoming solvent or selling ad space.

But "Dot Gone" does suggest another side to the story. That, in a way, these companies represented something that is classically American - the Horatio Alger-esque notion that a great idea and pluck were all that was required to succeed. The barefoot CEO in pajama bottoms looks ridiciulous and represents an immediate contradiction in terms, but it's also relatable for a country full of people who want to have everything both ways - comfort and success, fierce ambition with a relaxed attitude, total freedom with a responsibility to one's stockholders. And it's, you know, funny. Kind of in an "Office" sort of way, even though Ray specifically told me they didn't want to be compared to "The Office." Sorry, man.

Why not go see for yourself? Check out the Ghost Light District website here for shows and ticket information and that photo that I totally stole for this blog post.