I’ll admit that I had to Google “Venture Stores” before seeing The Factory Theater’s world premiere of “Lane Call: A Night of Closing,” a nostalgic workplace comedy about the Midwestern discount department store chain that thrived in the 1970s and ‘80s before going bankrupt and closing in 1998. To my knowledge, my small Illinois hometown never had a Venture; ours was a Kmart and Shopko kind of town until competition from the new Walmart Supercenter proved too fierce.
Foote and OKen’s script plays like a sitcom, with rapid-fire dialogue and a plot comprising short vignettes that capture the absurdities of the job — the unreasonable demands of customers, the mundane tasks such as hand-labeling individual sticks of deodorant, and the high jinks that bored 20-somethings get up to while on the clock.
In addition to evoking nostalgia about feeling 22, this production is a throwback to the heyday of discount retail. Although I never saw Venture’s burnt-orange interiors, Rose Johnson’s set is immediately recognizable to those who grew up strolling the scuffed, tiled floors of Midwestern department stores. The bright fluorescent lighting and blaring intercom announcements add to the authentic ambiance.