Theatre in Review: Asuncion (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre/Cherry Lane Theatre) Asuncion is a young woman from the Philippines, and, frankly, she's a bit of mystery. Her origins are a little vague and, as pretty and pleasant as she is; her intentions are a little hard to read. She's not alone; the intentions of Jesse Eisenberg's play are just about impossible to make out. It suffers from a bad case of multiple personalities, leaping from sex comedy gags to ugly power plays to political satire, without fully embracing any of them. Asuncion, the character, is perfectly charming. Asuncion, the play, is a bit of a mess. Edgar is a young would-be journalist; he dreams of roaming the world and exposing abuses of power, but all he has to show for his experience is a day trip to Cambodia and a stack of rejection slips from the Nation. He is currently parked in the apartment of Vinny, who is getting his Ph.D. in Black Studies at SUNY/Binghamton. (In John McDermott's cunningly observant set design, it's your typical grad-school semi-slum, constructed out of worn, mismatched furniture, rickety bookshelves, and mismatched fabrics; it appears not to have been cleaned in this decade.) Aside from a brief burst of African-inspired music played on his electronic keyboard, Vinny's choice of major is left totally unexplored. (He comes across as a hipster-in-training, and he spends most of his day in a cloud of marijuana.) Equally unexplored is the pair's relationship, which is subject to violent mood swings. Edgar worships the slightly older Vinny, who veers between playfully mussing Edgar's hair and icily demanding the back rent. Then again, Vinny's irritation is understandable, for Edgar is the kind of politically correct prude who monitors his roommate's shower usage -- water is a precious natural resource, you know - while worrying, loudly and endlessly, about oppression in the Third World. He's a nag, a drag, and a professional party pooper. Edgar is, apparently, estranged from his family, so it's altogether surprising when Stuart, his brother, shows up out of the blue. (Stuart is a macher of some sort on Wall Street, which alone is enough to earn Edgar's scorn, although Eisenberg hints at deeper family troubles.) With Stuart is -- surprise! -- his new wife, Asuncion, a semi-recent émigré from the Philippines, whom, he says, he needs to leave with Edgar for a few days -- no explanation given. What follows is a kind of political triangle as both men fall under Asuncion's cheerful, ready-for-anything spell. The terminally bored Vinny sees Asuncion as a new playmate; the initially hostile Edgar decides Asuncion must be a picture bride with a grim past as a sex slave, and sees her as material for a journalistic exposé. Much of the play consists of Asuncion and Vinny running around, dancing, laughing, and dropping acid, while Edgar folds his arms, purses his lips, and seethes with jealousy. Meanwhile, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, he spins fantasies of Asuncion's life as prostitute and all-around victim of capitalist oppression. It's a situation that can't last -- and, when Stuart returns, armed with the lamest possible one-line explanation for his absence, there is a reckoning to be had. It's not a very interesting reckoning, however, because Asuncion is afflicted with a bad case of ADD -- ideas flit through it, but they don't stay around long. One minute, Vinny and Edgar are a modern Oscar and Felix, foaming over the tasty, but apparently unavailable, Asuncion. A minute later, we're meant to see the men as colonizing forces, using the exotic Asuncion for their own selfish purposes. Things get really squirrely when Vinny, on an LSD trip, demands that Edgar perform oral sex on him, and it looks like Edgar just might go along with it. If you can't tell by now, Asuncion is a jumble of ideas anchored to no recognizable emotional reality. The characters are far too thinly conceived. Edgar isn't a person; he's an editorial page, full of one-note commentary. Vinny is an unmotivated collection of moods, designed to shift as the playwright requires. The director, Kip Fagan, does his best to track the show's hairpin turns, but it's a losing battle. In Edgar, Eisenberg has written himself a vehicle for the abundant mannerisms -- the squints, stares, and stammers -- which have, already in his young career, become his trademark. He's amusing when trying to explain away the head wound acquired during a gang attack -- it's racist, he notes, to discuss the fact that his black attackers were, well, black -- and it's fun to watch him stumble prudishly over sexual matters. (Sex, he asserts, should be "a mutually enjoyable experience"-- that is, if you have to have it at all.) But as the action becomes less and less credible, even he is hard put to make Edgar anything more than a one-dimensional nut job. Justin Bartha is good at suggesting that there's more to Vinny than is immediately apparent, even if his author doesn't meet him halfway. (There's an interesting passage in which Vinny amuses Asuncion by talking black, but, like everything else, it is left undeveloped.) Camille Mana's natural charm and stage presence go a long way toward making Asuncion seem like a real person rather than a collection of red herrings. In the thankless role of Stuart, Remy Auberjonois is thoroughly professional. You can say the same for the rest of the design package, including Ben Stanton's lighting, Jessica Pabst's appropriate costumes, and Bart Fasbender's sound design, which combines a variety of ambient effects -- running water, cell phones, etc.--with effectively chosen music selections. The best thing about Asuncion is that Eisenberg has real ambitions and a taste for provocative ideas, but, at this point, he's too shaky in matters of plot and character to present them credibly. At one point, Vinny, quoting Martin Luther King, says "Nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance." I couldn't have put it better myself.--David Barbour 
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