One of the largest conundrums with which Americans—no, with which populations everywhere—grapple today is recognizing serial killers before they act out their worst intentions. A profile has emerged, but whether or not it’s reliable is questionable. That’s to say, individuals may look to fit it but never prove to.
In Office Hour, at the Public Theater, Julia Cho has obviously felt a compulsion to take on the dicey subject. She’s produced a powerful drama that, for all its power, may not stand up to close analysis. It’s possible to fall almost entirely under the play’s 90-minute spell but leave not convinced of its validity.
Gina (Sue Jean Kim) is an adjunct creative writing teacher at what, given the age of the one student shown, looks to be a high school but could be a college—or maybe a junior college.
Told about frighteningly wayward student Dennis (Ki Hong Lee), Gina is skeptical. Fellow instructors David (Greg Keller) and Genevieve (Adeola Role) fill her in on Dennis’s gloomy presence, but Gina remains professionally dubious. Their insistence that Dennis’s fiction and poetry, with its unmitigated focus on violence, marks him as a potential killer doesn’t instantly persuade her that they’re right.
No matter. David and Genevieve have each had Dennis in a class and have consistently read frightening homework that eventually alienated his classmates. In Cho’s opening scene, they agree it’s up to Gina, who now has Dennis in her course, to get through to him.
Since Dennis has done nothing overt, they contend, school administrators won’t take any action. Their hands are tied, they maintain. So David and Genevieve argue, it’s up to teachers to take the difficult initiative.
Although still reluctant as that scene ends—and set designer Takeshi Kata’s wall behind the concerned trio parts to reveal the office shared with other adjuncts—Gina takes on the challenge. She does so, it’s eventually revealed, due to her own past as the child of emotionally distant parents.
Then begins Cho’s depiction of Gina’s attempting to break down the psychological barriers Dennis, perpetually hunched in hoody and dark glasses, presents. It’s easily predictable that Gina will penetrate Dennis’s ominous reserve—otherwise there would be no play, would there?—but how deeply she’ll penetrate remains uncertain.
That, needless to say, is the predominant Office Hour action, and from moment to moment it’s involving. The tactics Gina employs are many. Watching her search through her bag of tricks as at first she attempts to get Dennis talking at all demands attention. A particularly provocative strategy is her throwing a ream of Dennis’s writings out of her office window. (The view through the window indicates that fall semester is in progress.)
Once Gina does elicit responses—as again patrons know she will—Dennis’s subsequent thaw has its dramatic pull. An especially jolting exchange occurs when Gina thinks to touch Dennis—on the suspicion that he’s never ben touched by anyone other than his parents. The outcome is not what either of them expected.
Perhaps it’s a minor spoiler to say that eventually Gina provokes Dennis not only to admit he has a pistol in the bag he carries but also to produce it. This, by the way, leads to a series of imagined scenarios that won’t be described here. Okay, one does indicate that Dennis, who says he has a permit, is packing more than one pistol.
Cho’s tackling the significantly pressing issue of detecting and defusing mass murderers is admirable. (Remember that Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock doesn’t fit the profile.) But in Office Hour does she really provide an acceptable answer?
We all know—and perhaps from first-hand experience—that there are memorable teachers, teachers whose influence on us is indelible. On the other hand, isn’t it worrisome that great trouble can accrue when amateur psychologists are on the loose? At several moments Gina either underplays or overplays her hand, causing situations that could have had deleterious consequences for Dennis and/or her. (Cho imagines some in her dream diversions.)
Yes, Cho anticipates the criticism by establishing in the introductory scene that the school administrators had no right to interfere with a student not stirring outright trouble. But what about a school psychologist? There’s no mention of one, no mention that David, Genevieve or Gina would have sought a psychologist’s help had there been one to consult. Furthermore, there’s no mention of a psychologist warning Gina that she was tackling a problem well beyond her training.
And while on the subject of missing amenities, a spectator might have wondered about the presence or absence of metal detectors. Metal detectors are an important community topic these days. If Gina’s school had metal detectors in place, how did Dennis get through? If the school had no metal detectors, why doesn’t Cho have Gina or David or Genevieve at least comment on that? Their not being discussed even in passing is a noticeable lapse.
To some extent, Office Hours is a two-hander. As directed by Neel Keller with intensifying terror, it gives Kim and Lee the opportunity for a while to hold at bay the credulity questions raised. Thin, wired Kim—evidencing the fear of, say, a squirrel chased up a tree by a menacing dog—is on top of the proceedings.
Lee makes totally believable a young man informed so habitually from a young age that he was nothing that he has come to both believe and embrace that status. In relatively brief appearances, Keller and Role also lend authority—Keller especially in a scene where David, tired of dealing with the fragile Dennis, verbally attacks him.
Special mention goes out to sound designer Bray Poor for the sound effects—no specific detail to be given here about them for spoiler avoidance reasons. He’s also to be commended for his gets-under-the-skin music.
There’s much more to be said about the efficacy of theater as a helpful method to suss out potential killers. Thanks are due Cho for pointing the way, even if she’s only begun to point in the right direction.