STEPHEN BELBER’S LATEST work, Fault Lines,now playing at the Cherry Lane Theater, opens up with a scene that must have felt like familiar territory to director David Schwimmer: two buddies reuniting over beers and exchanging one liners regarding their sex lives and impending middle age. However, unlike the laugh-track-laden sitcom Schwimmer is best known for, Fault Lines seeks to explore the darkness beneath the humor, the realism we mask with one liners and quips.
In its slowly paced, punch-line-laced opening, we meet Bill (Josh Lucas) and Jim (Dominic Fumusa), old friends who have been out of touch and are finally reunited in the back room of a dive bar over beers and ceremonial shots of tequila. Bill, the most mature of the pair, seems to have everything one should desire from adulthood, including a career and a seemingly perfect marriage. Jim, on the other hand, has been living the life of a frat boy for over a decade and, at the age of 38, has a sex life consisting of one-night stands with 20-year-olds and handjobs from mature women on the bus. Despite his insistence that Bill secretly envies him, Jim wants out, pontificating on his extreme desire for a baby and a “life partner.” In the meantime, he’s trying to find fulfillment by designing composting toilets and spending 20 grand a year at Whole Foods, grasping at some larger idealism he just can’t seem to fully realize.
Beneath all the standard guy humor—do you people ever tire of dick jokes?—the two seem to have a deep, powerful bond, one perhaps stronger than one they feel toward any of the women in their lives. Embedded in the “bros,” “dudes” and “like, you knows” of the conversation are surprisingly open declarations of “I love you.” However, it becomes clear that Jim is by far the needier of the pair, and as the show moves on, he begins to complain of the unanswered messages he has left Bill, and the need for support never provided after his mother’s death.
The conversation itself, though quipfilled, begins to show the torment existing in the men’s lives. Bill still wants children, and is suffering from the blow of his wife’s miscarriage.
Jim’s retelling of a one-night stand quickly turns from a boast among men into a confession of loneliness and regret over an act he ultimately carries guilt for. Joe, a goofy barfly at least a full decade older than our boys, interrupts their conversation.
Divorced and seemingly alone in the world, he’s desperate for the attention of the two men.While ridiculous, pathetic and initially a source of amusement, he becomes a warning sign for the two men, a sight of just what they could become in the next phase of life if they don’t avoid certain pitfalls.
Although the cast performs seamlessly, bouncing their vibrant energy off one another, Lucas is most impressive in his performance, delivering lines of emotional catharsis with sincerity that might have turned into over-dramatized bravado is lesser hands. As director, Schwimmer shows a knack for comic timing, milking every laugh possible from the clever dialogue.The twists and turns of Joe’s character, however, seem gimmicky and absurd when taken at face value. But Emmerich’s performance allows the audience to suspend its disbelief.
Although the story and set-up may seem simple, Fault Lines manages to accomplish plenty for a one-act, 80-minute play that takes place entirely in a darkened bar room. In the end, the work undoubtedly succeeds in exploring and dissecting the fragile emotional architecture of friendships and the lies we maintain to keep those relationships together.
> Fault Lines Through Nov. 2, Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce St. (betw. Barrow & Bedford Sts.), 212-989-2020; $61.
