Off-Broadway Review: “The Receptionist” at The Irene Diamond Stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center (Through Sunday, June 7, 2026)
Adam Bock’s “The Receptionist” arrived in 2007 as a searing response to the Bush administration’s torture memos and the Abu Ghraib revelations. The play asked audiences to consider Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil”—how ordinary people enable extraordinary harm through the simple machinery of their daily work. Beverly answers phones, brews coffee, and gossips with her colleague Lorraine…