Local playwright Geetha Reddy’s latest world premiere, “The Employee Dharma Handbook,” now at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, is terrifically entertaining and utterly of the moment.
In a Bay Area aerospace company with its large contingent of Indian engineers (Wikipedia says the Bay Area is home to the highest concentration of Indian tech professionals anywhere in the world), interpersonal relations are at risk.
Designer Wilson Chin’s gleaming, monochromatic set captures the ambiance of a basement-floor science center in which human beings, with all their angst and fervor — and in this case, all their inherent prejudices and complicated relationships and inherited belief systems — must coalesce. Here, all five characters are preparing for a rocket launch to Jupiter. Billions of dollars are at stake, eagerly anticipated by the chief technology officer, C.K. (Ranjita Chakravarty) and the rest of the group.
But that’s just one thread of the plot.
Reddy’s writing is sharply witty, at times challenging for this reviewer to decipher (technical jargon, even some untranslated dialogue in an Indian language, Telugu) and full of surprises, and the cast, with its careful attention to all the nuances of personality, prejudice and inner life, brings authentic anger and confusion to the fore.
Leela (Megan Suri), the company’s smart and proficient propulsion systems manager, American born and of Indian descent, has been passed over. Snarky Indian immigrant Baasu (Kunal Dudheker) was recently promoted above her, to propulsion systems director. Why?
Tough and clever human resources employee Val, who’s Black (Kathryn Smith-McGlynn), suspects sexism.
Indian immigrant Krish (Kapil Talwalkar), chief architect and mission manager, who is responsible for Baasu’s promotion, has a secret of his own.
And the relationship between Val and C.K. is complicated, too.
The play, with no intermission, is a swift-moving, engrossing hour and 40 minutes. It begins with several introductory monologues aimed at the audience, which is confusing because patrons don’t yet know who the characters are. But that’s Reddy’s only misstep.
Soon enough, the issue of Leela’s lack of promotion gains traction, although at first the issue is instigated by Val, not Leela herself. When Val circulates among the staff with her queries, Baasu tells her, carefully, “Leela’s family is from a different community than Krish.” Baasu says that, like Krish, he himself is Brahmin, but “I am very, very atheist.” He explains to Val that Leela is Dalit — “untouchable,” which is “not such a nice word.”
So the subject of caste arises, just that innocuously, and becomes more complicated as the play continues. Leela has a lot to learn about her own heritage. Audience members who are not Indian have a lot to learn, too.
But it probably won’t be about the logistics of rocket launches. “I’ll check the wiring harnesses,” says Leela at one point. “And the grounding interfaces,” agrees Krish. This dialogue-heavy play could use a little less tech-talk. Still, the way that the many short scenes melt into each other — no distracting set changes — works well.
Preparations for the rocket launch ensue.
Reddy’s script is full of twists and turns, and the excellent cast, under Snehal Desai’s unerring direction, offers plenty of surprises, both comic and painful. At one point, as Val attempts to smooth over staff conflict with calming breathing exercises, a frustrated Baasu explodes: “You are mansplaining breathing to us! It is us who invented breathing!”
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s “The Employee Dharma Handbook” continues through Aug. 2 at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Tickets are $54 to $104 at Theatreworks.org,
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