Theatre in Review: Laugh it Up, Stare it Down (Cherry Lane Theatre)You're likely to do more staring than laughing at this oddball entertainment, an old-fashioned sex comedy crossed with a kind of Socratic dialogue. The playwright, Alan Hruska, doubles down on his peculiar premise: Laugh It Up, Stare it Down combines a banal portrait of a marriage with an even more banal discussion of the meaning of life, featuring plotting that is alternately clichéd and wildly maladroit. Basically, it's the old story: Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl. Boy and girl end up clinging to a buoy in the Atlantic Ocean. Joe and Cleo meet cute when she passes him on the street and he tries to pick her up, using the old one about their chance meeting being some kind of karmic crossroads, which, if attended to, could lead to a marriage, children, and a lifetime of fulfillment, and if ignored....well, Joe would rather not discuss that unpleasant possibility. Surprisingly, rather than keeping on walking, or, even better, calling the cops, Cleo engages with him, gently mocking the implications of his proposition. The scene ends with a clever little twist, but, already, two things are apparent. First, the dialogue, while literate -- there is a little tussle about whether Joe's last name, Allworthy, is more redolent of Trollope or Fielding -- only plays at being witty without ever achieving that happy state. Second, Joe's promises of a future filled with "ecstatic love" remain unfulfilled as Hruska rolls out a series of standard-issue conflicts lifted from a hundred other, better romantic comedies. Thus Cleo coolly appraises Joe's unprepossessing studio apartment while he tries to get her into bed. (As if in tribute to the There's a Girl in My Soup era of comic trifles, there's even a discussion of Cleo's putative virginity.) Later, when they have become a couple, she springs the news that she is pregnant, leading Joe to offer a wedding ring and a promise of prosperity. He promptly gets hired by a hedge fund and soon they are rolling in it, but their domestic paradise is roiled when he is briefly -- like 20 minutes briefly -- unfaithful. All of this is accompanied by acres of dialogue so arch it hurts. For example: Joe: Let's continue this over a cup of coffee.
Cleo: Where you would hope to convince me?
Joe: Where I would hope to seduce you.
Cleo: With one cup of coffee?
Joe: You've already said where that would lead.
Cleo: With the same probability as my being reincarnated as a radish. Or this: Joe: No, I mean, seriously, what do you do?
Cleo: Anthropology. That's what I do. As seriously as I can.
Joe: And where do you do it?
Cleo: At the university of course. There's very little call for anthropologists at, say, General Motors. (Beat) Need, I suppose, but not call. Then there's the question of whether or not we live in a random, unguided universe, explored in a series of silly, farcical developments. Cleo gives birth to their firstborn child, which briefly disappears when one of the nurses mislays the tot in the ladies' room. "I really had to pee," she explains. Later, Cleo and Joe face off against a burglar with a philosophical turn of mind and a taste for playing Russian roulette. Decades later, in a little Venice art gallery, Cleo announces that the proprietor has made a pass at her and, since Joe cheated on her 20 years earlier, she is thinking of taking the cad up on his offer. As it happens, the cad is a fake, as is the giant storm surge that he says threatens to sink the city. However, he adds, there really is a record-breaking hurricane headed toward the couple's home in Rhode Island. This leads to that scene on the buoy, which suggests that Joe and Cleo have flown home expressly to be storm-tossed survivors, clinging to wreckage in the middle of the ocean, but, by then, Laugh it Up, Stare it Down has long since stopped making any sense. Under the direction of Chris Eigeman, Jayce Bartok and Katya Campbell lend Joe and Cleo enough offhand charm to occasionally make you think they are saying or doing something amusing; such illusions quickly pass, however. Cleo and Joe are little more than a couple of attractive blanks, waiting for somebody to fill them in. Oddly, even though the characters age at least a quarter of a century, they never change in appearance. (At one point, Cleo tells Joe that his hair is thinning, a moment of unintentional hilarity since Bartok has the thickest head of hair south of 14th Street.) Amy Hargreaves turns up in a variety of roles including that unprofessional nurse, a notably false friend of Cleo's, and, in the play's most amusing running gag, a waitress in a restaurant with little or no food on the menu. Maury Ginsberg breathes some life into the roles of Joe's cynical best friend, that chatty burglar, and the (seemingly) lecherous art dealer. Kevin Judge's set, a series of platforms backed by a wall of leaded windows of various sizes, is attractive and flexible; it is nicely treated by Matthew J. Fick's lighting, especially the varied color washes that he creates on the cyc behind the windows. Peter Salett's original music and sound design strike the right lighthearted note. Jennifer Caprio's rather generic costumes are surprisingly unflattering; the play covers several decades, but it is impossible to tell when it is taking place since the styles never change. Overall, this is a pale and wandering effort, marked by some surprisingly amateurish touches. For one thing, Hruska has yet to find the knack of ending a scene on a strong curtain line. For another, Laugh it Up, Stare it Down ends on such an irresolute note that the audience at the performance I attended had no idea the play was over. The actors were forced to enter and start taking their bows before anyone knew to applaud. I'm afraid that such awkwardness is the rule, rather than the exception, these nights at the Cherry Lane. -- David Barbour 
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