Theater Review: American Hero Doesn’t Deliver

The woe of hard work — the conflict between the dignity of labor and the indignity of actual laboring — has long been a favorite theatrical theme, with only the particulars changing to suit the times. Once, playwrights indulged their interest in this subject by writing of farmers and sailors, subject to the whims of nature and the chain of command. Then came machinists, clerks, prostitutes, and domestics. Now we seem to have settled on fast-food workers as our favorite grunts. Astoundingly, two shows this summer involve the specific subset of sandwich-making. One is a musical (Fly By Night, now in previews at Playwrights Horizons); the other is the Second Stage Uptown production of a new play by Bess Wohl called, alas, American Hero. The sad pun tells you a lot about Wohl’s ambitions here, including perhaps that they are too numerous. It’s a comedy, it’s a critique, it’s political, it’s interpersonal: It’s one of the indigestible combo torpedoes advertised on the backlit menu boards dominating Dane Laffrey’s set. The comedy element is the most successful, and naturally comes first, as an officious new franchisee reads the insane dictates of the corporate manual to the three new “sandwich artists” he’s hired.