Erika Sheffer’s The Fundamentals is a powerful tale of the struggles of a service industry worker. It is also a parable for our times. Director Yasen Peyankov has taken what we see all the time, and really shows it to us. 

The Fundamentals (at Steppenwolf Theatre) tells the story of Millie (Alana Arenas), a housekeeper in The Bakerville, a New York boutique location of a premier luxury hotel chain. Classic dramatic tension arises as Millie, aspiring to a better job and compensation, tries to move up from cleaning rooms to front desk.

In the course of the story, Millie learns she can get ahead by feeding her manager profit enhancing ideas gleaned from a housekeeper’s perspective. Arenas’s Millie is completely convincing as the innocent feeling her way through a corporate environment, and learning as she goes.

Millie soon discovers her manager puts the highest value on dirt about long-time workers that will let her fire them and hire cheaper replacements. You will readily recognize the lifer in the thirty-year hotel veteran Abe (played to a 't' by Alan Wilder). He ends up in the crosshairs.

In the role of Eliza the manager, Audrey Francis is flawless as an avatar of the steely corporate operative. She captures your attention, yet makes your skin crawl.

Another tension arises in the play around a class divide between workers, and the more moneyed class of managers and customers. This gap is even expressed in the language: Arena’s Millie, speaking in a thoroughly natural Manhattan brogue, contrasts sharply with the crisp Connecticut language of manager Eliza. Tanera Marshall coached dialects.

The private life of the struggling housekeeper spills over into workplace conflicts with her beau, hotel janitor Lorenzo (a strong performance by Armando Riesco). 

Like many contemporary service businesses, this hotel has developed a detailed strategy for maximizing the satisfaction of guests, carefully training employees in seven “fundamentals.” 

In this scenario natural expressions of interest and concern are replaced with uniform gestures of graciousness, and an interest in a customers welfare that is artificial, even clinical. Millie questions aloud the conflict in offering generosity and graciousness to customers, but not to colleagues. 

The Fundamental’s serious reflection of these societal concerns is a tribute to the developers of this work – more than a year in the making it was commissioned by Steppenwolf, funded by the Zell Foundation, parts were read at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and an earlier version was performed at Steppenwolf’s First Look series last year.

Steppenwolf’s prodigious marketing skills were also put to dramatic use fashioning media props in this work. The play is sprinkled with highly polished advertising interludes (Stephan Mazurek) that are shockingly authentic. This was the first time I have ever been shaken from suspending disbelief, to really believing. 

The set by Collette Poward also deserves great praise. The millworked trim and  commercial lighting of a hotel hall make a great backdrop for the multimedia interludes. The elevator from the subterranean locker room to guest services is completely convincing.

The Fundamentals at Steppenwolf Theatre comes highly recommended. It runs through December 23, 2016.