Off Broadway Review: ‘American Hero’ Starring Ari Graynor, Jerry O’Connell

For a play that needs to go through at least one more draft, American Hero is more provocative and entertaining than you’d expect. Set in a generic sandwich shop in an anonymous strip mall, Bess Wohl’s quirky comedy observes a few specimens of the embattled American working class whose aspirational hopes and dreams have been reduced to the low-wage service jobs they’re fighting to hang onto. Under Leigh Silverman’s sure directorial hand, a smart cast fills in some of the blanks of their unfinished characters, lending them some dignity in their darkest moments of comic desperation. The existential plight of the new owner of a sub shop franchise and his three freshly hired “sandwich artists” is not to be sneered at, although the drama that wracks their souls does involve how many slices of cheese should go into a sandwich. Simmering beneath the heroic battle to succeed in a cutthroat market — and the great crisis when the franchise is abandoned by its corporate owners — is a metaphorically rich survival drama about individual pluck and group courage.