Berkshire on Stage

Dorset Theatre Festival is closing out its summer 2026  season with Kenneth Lonergan’s terrific, twisty, moral thriller Lobby Hero from 2001. For everyone who is sick of the red, white and blue in our 250th year as a country, here is a celebration of the gray area in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The set of a residential building’s tall ceilinged lobby by Alexander Woodward is a temple of grand seediness. There’s plenty of fine woodwork and moulding but also mail left on the floor and a stray paper flapping from a vent 15 feet up. In this vast hall sits Jeff (Tobias Segal), the overnight security guard struggling to stay awake with his Grisham paperback and constant cups of coffee. He is immediately upbraided for his dereliction of duties as the play opens by his “by the books” boss William (Donathan Walters).

Jeff has not logged a recent police visit to the building, indicated by the police car’s lights reflected on the set as the cop car pulls away from the building in the play’s opening moments. Expert lighting by Wen Ling Liao. The details of the logging of the police visit are so exact and demanding that you know Lonergan has worked a shift in this building and shortly into the play’s opening moments you will feel you have clocked in as well.

The official police visit was from neighborhood cops Bill (Lee Aaron Rose) and his probie partner Dawn (Carmen Flood) making their rounds. Bill is the tough talking, seen it all, full of himself, corrupt centurion dispensing advice and flirtation to his young charge…who he has just started an affair with. This officer of the law is visiting the building on a booty call to Mrs. Heinvald on the 22nd floor. Just doing his rounds.

There are complicated and complicating factors which will squeeze these delightfully flawed characters in director M. Bevin O’Gara’s wonderfully see sawing production. William’s brother is suspected in a murder and Dawn has perhaps used unwarranted force in blinding a man. Everyone has dark needs, motivations and regrettable actions but somehow that doesn’t prevent us from enjoying their company and seeing their essential goodness. Well, all except Bill who in his arrogant, bullying, performative duplicity is irredeemable. We’ve seen enough of his type lately.

Sad sack Jeff in Segal’s sunny playing is the perfect irritant to these poseurs of authority surrounding him. He can’t help himself sticking his finger into the open wounds of the cops and his boss, the Captain. His active listening is extraordinary as we get inside his head and feel the urge with him to pinprick and deflate the swollen egos with their pretensions surrounding him. 

Walters, Rose and Flood are exemplary in their scenes with Segal and each other. The world created where shared confidences can destroy a life gives us a gut punch just as we were laughing our heads off. It is a most entertaining thicket of conflicting impulses preventing the truth from emerging and this masterful cast guides us with a steady hand throughout.

The Dorset Theatre Festival presents Kenneth Lonergan’s “Lobby Hero”, directed by M. Bevin O’Gara, from August 21-September 5, 2026, at the Dorset Playhouse, 104 Cheney Road in Dorset, VT. CAST: Tobias Segal as Jeff, Donathan Walters as William, Lee Aaron Rose as Bill, Carmen Flood as Dawn. CREATIVE TEAM: Scenic design Alexander Woodward, lighting design Wen Ling Liao, costume design Barbara A. Bell, sound designer M.L. Dogg, production stage manager Adam Taylor Foster, casting director Joe Gery.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.dorsettheatrefestival.org.

ADVISORY: This Production contains the use of water-based haze, herbal cigarettes, prop weapons, flickering lights, and adult themes.

RUNTIME: Approximately 2 hours and 25 minutes (including 15-minute intermission)