Theatre in Review: The Man Under (Athena Theatre/59E59)You're on your first date, and the young lady's idea of a good time is to roam through the tunnels of New York's subway system. For extra fun, she likes to lie down on the tracks, experiencing the thrill of the cars rushing above her. She wants you to do the same. Can this be love? That's the dilemma facing Jeff, the hapless hero of The Man Under. Not that the setup of Paul Bomba's new play needed to get any squirrelier, but here goes: Jeff (played by the author), who is depressed, is standing in a subway station, and is seized by the urge to throw himself under an oncoming train. Fighting the impulse, he turns and looks directly into the eyes of a beautiful young woman who, it is clear, is in the same psychological bind. She disappears, and Jeff, enlisting the assistance of his roommate, Martin, launches on a search for the mystery gal. Nine days later, she turns up, having purposely led the men on a not-so-merry chase around downtown Manhattan. Her name is Lisa, and she is a real piece of work -- possessive, nasty to his friends, and demanding instant and total intimacy as they make their way through the bowels of the city. (Her idea of getting-to-know-you chitchat: "Are you going to turn and face me and show me your dark, dirty, underground place?") For some reason, this kind of behavior leaves Jeff entranced, apparently because he is still mourning his fiancée, who died of cancer. To let us know this, Bomba reveals that Jeff still keeps her wedding dress, encased in plastic, which he produces in moments of stress. All I can tell you is Paul Bomba, the actor, should have a few sharp words with Paul Bomba, the author. The former is clearly talented, but the latter has produced a play that is a lot of morbid nonsense. The emotional logic of his story is faulty at every turn. I suppose we're meant to be entranced at Jeff's obsessive new romance with Lisa, but when the two start to have sex on the tracks, all I could think about was the dirt and the rats. If Bomba was ever going to make such a bizarre premise convincing -- and that's a big if -- he would have to render it in far more detail than he has done here. In addition to being sketchily conceived and thinly rendered, the Jeff-and-Lisa plot is regularly sidelined for updates on Martin and his endless troubles getting together with Jennifer, the pretty next-door neighbor. Apparently, whenever Jennifer is free, Martin is dating somebody, and vice versa. This problem of bad timing is hashed out in numbing detail. Alternately dreary and preposterous, The Man Under cannot be recommended, but admittedly, it does feature a nimble cast of four under the direction of Benjamin Kamine. Bomba has an intensity that makes even some of the most purple passages of dialogue seem compelling. Briana Pozner plays Lisa in a damn-the-logic-full-speed-ahead manner that certainly gets your attention, even if it leaves you wondering why anyone would give this dame the time of day. Curran Connor and Veronique Ory play the Martin-and-Jennifer scenes with an unforced naturalism that makes them a little easier to take. The Man Under also features a clever set design by Julia Noulin-Mérat: Jeff's apartment is rendered in a kind of forced perspective with a very shallow stage, a strategy that suggests how he, Martin, and Jennifer live in uneasy proximity to one another. When the action shifts underground, a set of UV lights (lighting by Charles Forster) transforms the walls of the black-box Theatre C at 59E59 with a riot of colorful patterns. Jeremy S. Bloom's expert sound design makes use of many ambient effects; it is especially adept at suggesting what it must be like to find oneself terryingly close to a moving subway car. The costumes, by Lara de Bruijn, are suitable to each character. The Man Under is, I think, another example of DIY theatre, where young people put on a show to get themselves noticed by the industry. As such, it's a likely destination for casting directors. For everyone else, I advise waiting for the next train.--David Barbour 
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