I’m not sure what to make of Asuncion, the new play by, and co-starring Jesse
Eisenberg, a production of the Rattlestick
company currently “off site” at the Cherry
Lane Theatre. It takes place in a the
disheveled bachelor pad of Vinny (Justin Bartha) a history teacher who used to be TA to slacker
Edgar (Eisenberg), who is in permanent residence as a non-paying roommate. The
two are ostensibly straight, so when Edgar’s older Wall Street broker brother
Edgar (Remy Auberjonois)
unexpectedly appears, asking to drop off his new immigrant wife Asuncion (Camille
Mana) for a few days, there’s the potential
for a romantic triangle—it’s almost mandated. (Indeed, upon reading a
thumbnail description of the play, a friend of mine remarked, “It sounds like
a low-rent Star-Spangled Girl with a Hispanic accent.” But it
isn’t that, quite.)
Mr.
Eisenberg demonstrates clearly that he can write funny and paint vivid
characters, but the slender story itself bears little scrutiny (Why in the
world would solvent Edgar drop his new wife off in this pit? An explanation is
at length offered, but it makes as much sense as none) and from the get-go
there’s something a little unhealthy going on; Vinnie and Edgar seem less like
man-buds than co-dependent companions feeding off each other’s pathologies, and
it’s as if the alluded-to Neil Simon had taken off the socks and shoes of Star
Spangled Girls’ sitcom style characters and
made them wade up to their ankles in the water of corrosive solipsism. They
never out-and-out go to “a bad place”—in fact, they instinctively back
off before things go too far—but the stank of potential moral anarchy is
everywhere. And because the atmosphere clashes with the facile comic tone, the
play’s universe doesn’t seem quite “real,” despite the very literal kitchen sink integrity of the performances and the
direction by Kip Fagan.
Then
again, a new, young playwright can do a lot worse than prove that he can at
least create memorably unique characters and write very funny lines for them to
say. That suggests a certain amount of storytelling prowess to be developed,
especially because in Asuncion he’s able
to sustain it for the evening. And thus I’m very interested to see the next
evening he may have to offer…
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