Office talk, with a twist

Janice Duclos (left) as Beverly and Angela Brazil as Lorraine in ''The Receptionist.'' (Mark Turek)

PROVIDENCE - Under a ceiling of the ugly acoustic tiles and buzzing fluorescent lights that are the bane of office workers everywhere, but with a back wall that's curiously unfinished-looking, a man stands alone onstage and talks about fly fishing.

It's a brief little monologue; he tells us he enjoys fly fishing but not rabbit hunting ("They scream. I don't like it") and explains his method of killing the fish. Then he says, rather cryptically, "OK. So. Let's give this another try," and walks out the door at the back of the set - which then rotates to reveal a fully furnished office reception area, complete with chairs, old magazines, and a fortress of a desk for the receptionist.

Played with minute and comic precision by Janice Duclos, she is the star of this show, a new play by Adam Bock that Trinity Repertory Company is staging after a successful New York run. We know she's the star because it's called "The Receptionist." But what we don't know for a long time, as Beverly the receptionist goes through her mundane daily chores, is what that odd little opening scene has to do with anything.

In fact, the trivia of Beverly's day goes on at such length, and in such detail, that we almost forget about Mr. Fly Fisherman - especially once Beverly is joined by Lorraine, a young and frivolous-seeming co-worker who's more interested in gossiping about her ex-boyfriend than in doing any actual work. Lorraine and Beverly chat and giggle; Beverly answers the phone - "Northeast Office. . . . May I put you into his voice mail?" - over and over; time passes in that inconsequential, office-life way.

It's all very carefully drawn by the playwright and very expertly performed by the actors, both Duclos and Angela Brazil as Lorraine. But as the minutes tick on - and as we remember that it's only a 70-minute play - it feels increasingly, irritatingly slight, like a skit dragged out to mystifyingly great length. There's also more than a whiff of condescension toward the characters. Bock has observed them closely, but there's not an ounce of empathy in his gaze. So why does he bring them to our attention?

Eventually another character arrives, a calculatingly flirtatious young man "from the Central Office." He's here to see Mr. Raymond, who's out. Ah. Mr. Raymond. That must be the fly-fishing guy.

Even more eventually, and inevitably, Mr. Raymond does return. And now, finally, all our questions - why we're watching these people, what they're doing in this bland office, and what that first scene meant - get answered, in what's supposed to be a horrifying and shocking twist but plays more like a gimmick. It would be unfair, probably, to reveal that twist, except to say that Bock has taken the phrase "the banality of evil" and realized it in an exhaustive, exhaustingly literal way.

Bock is a hot playwright just now, and in "The Receptionist" you can see why: He has a gift for natural-sounding, believably hesitant and inarticulate dialogue, and he knows how to give actors plenty to do in even the smallest moments. But those gifts could be put to better use than in writing a play that's neither as amusing nor as troubling as it wants to be.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.