Bock in black

We can claim Adam Bock as a San Francisco playwright, but that's really not quite accurate.The talented writer basically used the Bay Area as a way station between his native Canada and the greener pastures of New York. But it must be said, the pastures were pretty green in San Francisco, where Bock made a splash with the man-in-love-with-shark comedy Swimming in the Shallows with Shotgun Players (done in the basement of Theatre Rhinoceros) and most especially with Five Flights, a production of Encore Theatre Company at the Thick House.Well, let's all celebrate the fact that "San Francisco" playwright Adam Bock won an Obie Award last Monday for his play The Thugs. (The Obies, in case you don't know or barely care, are the Village Voice's awards for off-Broadway shows.)The Thugs, we have discovered through some diligent Googling, is about temps in a law office who suspect some of the firm's employees are being murdered or something even more sinister.The New York Times' Jason Zinoman described the play as, "a delightfully paranoid little nightmare that is both more chillingly realistic and pointedly absurd than anything John Grisham ever dreamed up. "Message to Adam: congratulations. Message to Bay Area theater companies: please produce The Thugs. We hear it's only an hour.