Off Broadway

The Drunken City

 (Playwrights Horizons; 128 seats; $45 top)

By DAVID ROONEY

Sue Jean Kim, left, and Cassie Beck encounter Barrett Foa and Mike Colter on the night of a bachelorette party in 'The Drunken City.'

A Playwrights Horizons presentation of a play in one act by Adam Bock. Directed by Trip Cullman.
 
Melissa - Maria Dizzia
Marnie - Cassie Beck
Linda - Sue Jean Kim
Eddie - Barrett Foa
Frank - Mike Colter
Bob - Alfredo Narciso
 

In his last two plays, "The Thugs" and "The Receptionist," Adam Bock used the seeming innocuousness of cube-farm small talk and mundane office routine to veil the sinister hidden realities that lurked beneath. In "The Drunken City" he pulls a reverse switch, with characters whose intoxicated blather and apparent shallowness mask genuine emotional need. Love and commitment are inevitably less gripping issues than murder or torture -- the oblique subjects of those earlier plays -- but the writer's knack for subverting expectations remains sharp. That skill helps overcome the imbalance in Trip Cullman's production, which savors the comedy but struggles with the sincerity.

"The city's like some dark creature in the night that cracks open an eye. It just stares at you and dares you to come closer," says Linda (Sue-Jean Kim). "Don't go into the city," adds her friend Melissa (Maria Dizzia), even more ominously. These warnings come at the end of a prologue in which the bridge-and-tunnel gals, and their pal Marnie (Cassie Beck), squeal with excitement while showing off their engagement rings and fiances' photos to the audience under the glare of full house lights.

Cullman and Bock continue to milk the awkwardness of that pre-opening encounter when the play proper gets under way on the night of the girls' bachelorette party three weeks later. There are few things more uncomfortable than being sober around overstimulated, underinhibited strangers. Pretty much everyone in "Drunken City" has had a few cocktails too many, testing the fragile equilibrium of their world and washing away the self-awareness that usually keeps uneasy truths under wraps.

The likely impulse for many New Yorkers upon meeting a similar bunch on any given night would be to cross the street and get the hell out of Hell's Kitchen. But while Bock's characters may slur their words and be occasionally obnoxious and unsteady on their feet, they slyly seduce the audience by coloring their sitcom surfaces with something real.

When Marnie, Melissa and Linda meet Eddie (Barrett Foa) and Frank (Mike Colter), the attraction between Marnie and Frank at first seems like random drunken flirtation. But for Marnie, it's the key that unlocks her inner fears.

Amusingly electrified by the shock she's even saying these things out loud, Marnie confesses she's more in love with the idea of being a bride than a wife -- wearing the dress, being looked at -- and more fearful of disappointing her family and friends than convinced she's found her soulmate. (He proposed in a loud restaurant; she was thinking about something else at the time, so said yes "by mistake.") Beck expertly plays all this for comedy, but she also brings the panicked vulnerability of a woman aware she's running out of time to rescue herself.

For Frank, the encounter is equally transformative. Stuck in a holding pattern since being dumped by his girlfriend, he acquires the ability to reflect on his faults and open himself up to something new. Bock playfully adopts the musical convention of love expressed through dance in Frank's sweetly clumsy romantic overture to Marnie.

David Korins' minimal set cleverly illustrates the earth-shattering impact of Marnie's transgression, and of several emotional shifts that follow, with a seesaw central platform that literally tilts the characters' world. The glittering distortion of the city on a drunken night also is reflected in a rear-wall funhouse mirror with changing windows of bright-colored light, while sound designer Bart Fasbender provides the grumbling noises from the belly of the beast as it stirs but never sleeps.

Cullman at times fails to surmount the physical limitations of actors standing around in an empty space. But the director smartly takes his cue from this cool comicstrip rendering of New York, maintaining a light touch even as the group's anxiety escalates. There are faint reminders of Martin Scorsese's film "After Hours" in the play's chronicle of a night on the town gone awry.

Given that her own engagement has fallen apart after discovering her fiance was cheating on her, Melissa is particularly alarmed at Marnie's behavior, and her rigid, judgmental reaction causes a rift in the friendship. While she seems too smashed to take the whole escapade seriously, ditzy Linda struggles with her fears of the city, of her own nature and insecurities. Eddie is just along for the ride, but his eagerness to defend Frank hints at deeper feeling for his straight buddy.

With Beck, Foa is the other standout of an appealing, ethnically diverse cast. His subtle signals that Eddie is gay initially make it seem this will be texture rather than plot, so it's a pleasure when Bob (Alfredo Narciso) shows up and gives him a love interest. Owner of the bakery where the girls work, Bob is the play's sole mascot for sobriety, but with his walls of aggressive defensiveness, he could use a drink to loosen up. Nonetheless, the shy, quiet development of Eddie and Bob's mutual attraction -- also flowering via dance -- is one of the play's most winsome delights.

There are touching moments, when the sheer surprise of people communicating real feeling for one another seems something rare and wonderful. But the emotional turns often prove tricky for Cullman to navigate, as much due to the cheesiness of the direct-address disclosures as to any deficiency in the staging. Linda and Bob, in particular, get some clunky sentimental speeches, while Linda's expression of despair through song is too dourly flamboyant to seem earnest.

Bock previously tracked the romantic commitments of a group of gay and straight friends in his rough-edged but charming 2005 play "Swimming in the Shallows." While there's much to enjoy here in the off-kilter humor and wryness of observations large and small, the return to familiar territory adds to the sense that it's time for this consistently inventive playwright to make the leap to something more ambitious and weighty.

His twisty plots and structural economy, his finely tuned ear for dialogue that's witty without being overworked, and his loose-limbed mix of naturalism with odd presentational flourishes and fanciful grace notes give Bock's pithy plays a distinctive voice. But when a writer this gifted sticks to his safety zone, the nagging thought of being denied something bigger and bolder begins to intrude on the appreciation.

Set, David Korins; costumes, Jenny Mannis; lighting, Matthew Richards; original music, Michael Friedman; sound, Bart Fasbender; choreography, John Carrafa; production stage manager, Bess Marie Glorioso. Opened March 26, 2008. Reviewed March 22. Running time: 1 HOUR, 20 MIN.