Connor (Evan Klein), Johnny (Dan Patrick Brady), and Tina (Kate Miller) find some camaraderie before they conspire to blackmail a famous baseball player in The Bathroom Attendant.
The Bathroom Attendant, by Tom Kelly, centers on Johnny (Dan Patrick Brady), an affable ex-prizefighter who is down on his luck in Las Vegas. Living in a rundown housing block on the outskirts of the city, Johnny currently works as a restroom attendant at the city’s Mob Museum, but he believes his fortune is just one winning hand away—if only he can scrape together enough cash to play.
Tina (Miller) and Johnny (Brady) do some day drinking even though they should be focused on work and other things. Photographs by Scott Fetterman.
Tina (Kate Miller in an outstanding performance), a former porn star with a heart of gold, is a neighbor and the closest thing he has to a friend. She tries to set him straight about getting a job. Most of her suggestions are for low-level jobs including Krispy Krunchy Chicken, which is hiring for the night shift. “You want I have no dignity at all?” he asks. She replies, “Rent comes before dignity on the to-do list.”
One day, after Johnny has coaxed Tina into some daytime drinking, there’s a knock at the door. They don’t know if it’s the landlord, a bookie, or even the mafia. It turns out to be a nervy teenager named Connor (Evan Klein who plays the part with pathos), the son of a friend from the Brooklyn neighborhood where Johnny grew up. After a long trip down memory lane, including the pretense of having Johnny sign his old boxing gloves, Connor reveals his true purpose. He witnessed a baseball star beating up his girlfriend in the parking lot of the Bellagio Hotel and has captured it on video. He wants Johnny to help him blackmail the star athlete. With the possibility of a large payout, Tina also gets on board.
Although director Andrew Block helps keep the story moving, Kelly’s heartfelt script has more plot twists than a stick of Twizzlers, including giving significant stage time to two minor characters. Marcus Livingston (Jon Krupp), a lawyer hospitalized with cancer, feels so duty-bound to preserving the baseball star’s reputation that he tears his IV out and leaves his sickbed to deliver a threatening message to the blackmailing crew. He does nothing to hold back his vitriol:
Marcus: All of life is not equally important. The girl is disposable. She’s not part of the big picture. She is a bug on a great man’s shoe. She is nothing.
Tina: Nothing? She is just a kid. She has her whole life in front of her.
Marcus: And what a life it promises to be. She is a fifteen-year-old whore and junkie. What will she do with that life? Cure Alzheimer’s? Write an opera for the ages? (…) The street cleaners should get their hoses, turn them up, and drive this fecal matter down the fucking sewers.
Marcus is meant to be a godlike character, determining whose life has value and whose doesn’t, but his villainy teeters on caricature.
Marcus Livingston (Jon Krupp, left) plays a villainous lawyer who comes to advise Johnny and crew against their blackmail plan.
Bambi (Mari Blake), the athlete's battered girlfriend and the “fecal matter” Marcus refers to, harbors her own thin subplot. Her plan to sell prescription drugs acquired from her doctor’s visit—which carry a hefty street value—would be disrupted if Connor were to leak the video.
The world of the play—confined to a single room—is artfully established through a set design capturing the ramshackle state of a transient motel. A beat-up couch, an old TV, and a mini fridge crowd the small stage, flanked by a poster of Johnny’s last fight and an image of the Las Vegas Strip (Scott Fetterman) projected outside the window. Sound designer Tony Lepore provides loud knocks on the door, shouts from downstairs, and the noise of people walking outside the room that further encapsulate the world in which Johnny, Tina and Connor cook up their plans.
Each character’s desperation for money is well conveyed in the play. Johnny is under the thumb of dangerous loan sharks; Tina helps runaways get cleaned up to return home; and Connor needs money to get his mother into a better rehab center. As tensions rise, the trio begin to turn on one another.
Johnny and Tina’s companionable bond, which made their lives more bearable, tragically begins to unravel as well. In holding back from the exploration of their friendship, while devoting substantial stage time to secondary characters, Kelly misses the opportunity to deepen a sense of their relationship. But the play still delivers a punch with its bleak message: making bad choices and running away from a difficult past will lead to an inevitable demise.
Sparkplug Productions’ presentation of Tom Kelly’s The Bathroom Attendant plays through Aug. 30 at Bank Street Theatre (124 Bank St.). Evening performances are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are 2 p.m. on Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit sparkplugproductions.com.
Playwright: Tom Kelly
Direction: Andrew Block
Production Design: Scott Fetterman
Lighting & Sound Design: Tony Lepore
If you enjoyed this review, please click on the Like icon below.
