A Samsonite Set of Conflicted Emotions
To find a play about twentysomethings that features recognizable characters is a rare commodity. To find an Off-Off-Broadway play about recognizable twentysomethings that involves a surplus of talent is the Holy Grail of adventurous theatergoing. Unlikely though it may be, that Holy Grail is now at Theater for the New City, being performed under the title Keep Your Baggage With You (at all times).
Playwright Jonathan Blitstein (who wrote the fitfully entertaining indie film [Let Them Chirp Awhile]) and director Daniel Talbot (who wrote the flat-out astonishing Slipping, seen last year at Rattlestick Theatre) have teamed up to bring Blitsteins questioning, confused and just plain ornery characters to life. Performed by a cast of four on a bare stage that is outfitted with only the minimum props required to bring various New York City locations to life, Baggage follows two lifelong friends as they stop being friends.
Both Dave (Daniel Abeles) and Greg (Nate Miller) have the ill fortune to be out of sync when it comes to their dating lives. When the play begins, Dave is happily partnered with Julie (Laura Ramadei), talking about Ikea trips while Greg bemoans the lack of smart women in New York City. As the play progresses, both men will go through humiliating, crushing breakups, and neither will be able to offer any solace to the other. As Greg and Dave drift apart, despite a beer here or sushi there, the little occurrences and decisions in life that mold us into the adults were meant to be are examined with startling clarity and a lack of judgment by Blitstein. Dave turns to Buddhism to kick his over-sexed, hard-partying ways. Greg, however, begs everyone in his life for brutal honesty and then rewrites their words into something that he can grasp; he usually heads straight for recasting them as impassive assholes, so that he can refrain from examining his own behavior.
Abeles gets the more interesting character, cracking jokes about banging models (You just want to feed them! he says in exasperation) and oozing smarm. But its Miller who gives the evenings most powerful performance, a perfectly modulated descent from empathetic emo guy into unfeeling meathead. His girlfriend Ashley (Molly Ward) tells him that she couldnt stand how effeminate he could be. By the plays end, all traces of kindness and human empathy have been varnished away, indicated primarily by Millers posture and a habitual tic of a grin. Blitstein could have fleshed out Ashley and Julie a bit more (he writes them out of most of the show with an unlikely premise), but when it comes to flailing twentysomething guys, this playwright knows his stuff. ------
[Keep Your Baggage With You (at all times)]
Through Aug 14, [Theater for the New City], 155 1st Ave. (betw. E. 9th & 10th Sts.), 212-352-3101; $15.