'BFF' is MIA

The structure of Anna Ziegler’s disappointing BFF, produced by Women’s Expressive Theater, oscillates with a metronome’s precision: Scenes from the past relentlessly followed by scenes from the present. Those from the past follow two teenage girls who call themselves best friends forever—Lauren (Sasha Eden), the pretty and feminine one, and Eliza (Laura Heisler), who may have been gloomy and sarcastic before her father’s death, but now exudes enough bitterness to make Avril Lavigne look jubilant. “1991,” Eliza world-wearily exhales. “It doesn’t sound like much, does it?”

Meanwhile, the present scenes track the now-adult Lauren and Seth (Jeremy Webb), who meet cute at Lauren’s yoga class. He says he’s there for a class on “finding your inner voice in a post 9/11 landscape,” but really, he just wants a date. And he gets one, then another, then a third, and soon he’s unwittingly in trouble: Lauren doesn’t call herself Lauren, but “Eliza.” First you think you heard something wrong—maybe Eden fudged a line; maybe Eliza was Lauren’s imaginary best friend. Then you wait—and wait—for Ziegler to explain.

So let me save you time. In a fit of hormonal pique, Lauren chucks her bond with frowsy, sexually-ambiguous Eliza to ally with the more popular girls at school and to get her first boyfriend, thus transforming into as much of a superficial Jappy bitch as lots of teenage girls. It triggers Eliza into self-destructive behavior, and later, death, leaving Lauren a guilt-plagued and haunted marine biologist as an adult. Hence, I’m guessing, Kevin R. Frech’s woozy projections popping up on Robin Vest’s inelegant set.

Well, maybe that’s unfair: Vest did have to devise scenery representing the girls’ rooms, the yoga class, a park bench, bars where Seth and Lauren date and Seth’s apartment. But where Ziegler takes forever to clarify her story, Vest’s design makes matters even murkier. What are those moving panels along the upstage wall all about? Are the aquatic projections metaphorical? Why does Eliza appear along the upstage wall during one of the present scenes? Is this a shaggy-girl story?

And why does director Josh Hecht allow Eden and Heisler to act with the one-noteism of an ABC afterschool special? Their bond is sweet, yes, and certainly some scenes are nicely written, but Ziegler’s dialogue is mostly a celebration of misty cliché. Ditto Eden’s scenes with Webb, but here’s an actor who actually knows how to crush lemons into lemonade. Seth is as neurotic as Lauren—he mentions his father’s death and his therapist constantly—but Webb’s acting bears the sincerity that Eden often lacks. Late in the play, when Seth proposes to Lauren, thus forcing her to come clean, the hurt on his face is more emotionally affecting than anything about the aftermath of girlhood ties gone wrong. Compared to Webb’s work, the girls’ fractured fairy tale is soggy cookies and milk. 

Through March 17. The DR2 Theatre, 103 E. 15th St. (at 4th Ave.), 212-239-6200; $25-$35.