Elizabeth Bunch

As Jean, the Alley’s Elizabeth Bunch creates a perfect mouse of a character, seeming always to cringe and shrink into her petite frame, always smoothing over every awkward situation, practicing what Gordon describes as “compassionate obfuscation.” It’s impossible not to identify with her, root for her, knowing all the while that she will be stepped on by most everyone she meets. As Gordon’s mother describes her, she’s “comforting … like a very small casserole.” Nevertheless, she carries on her heroic task: keep answering Gordon’s phone since “as long as people called him, he wouldn’t be dead.”