Theatre in Review: Danger and Opportunity (East Village Basement)

	Ryan Spahn, Julia Chan. Photo: Emilio Madrid

The characters in Danger and Opportunity have a bad case of throuple trouble. Christian and Edwin are a married pair, hosting Margaret, Christian's girlfriend from his Catholic high school days. It's one of those nights, and many bottles of wine are consumed as the not-so-good old days are recalled. As you can imagine, Edwin has some questions about his husband's youthful heterosexual fling, which has all the hallmarks of having been a real affair and not a closeted charade. Indeed, Edwin struggles to digest this information, but, then again, things are more than a little troubled at home: He and Christian must contend with a smallish, but pronounced, age difference; a clash of sensibilities; and a looming case of marital bed death, leading to some Edward Albee-style sniping between them. Then Christian drops a little bombshell: Since Margaret got back in touch with him recently (having moved to New York for a new job), he has been having sexual fantasies about her.

This news could lead to thrown vases and fisticuffs; instead, Margaret admits that the idea has a certain appeal to her. Then Edwin, almost reluctantly, admits to being turned on. And, what the hell, off they go to bed. So successful is that first encounter that what initially appears to be a spontaneous one-off soon becomes a semi-regular thing. Next thing you know, the men give Margaret the keys to their apartment. Soon, she moves in, and they are pioneering their particular three-way form of domestic bliss. Fine, but I still want to know: Who does the laundry and the vacuuming?

That last line is a joke, but not entirely, as it points to the nagging unreality that plagues Danger and Opportunity; at least initially, their triangular encounters are so zipless as to beggar belief. Is everyone similarly invested in their bedroom fun? Does no one have any ambivalence? This is especially hard to believe in the case of Edwin, a hard-core Kinsey six, until he starts romping with Margaret. It isn't until she gets pregnant that everyone starts to think hard about the contours of this arrangement, leading to private alliances and confidences not fully shared. Even then, the portrait of this household is a bit too glossy and convenient. Playwright Ken Urban has daringly imagined this situation, but he hasn't imagined it quite enough.

Urban, one of the more solid theatre writers around, is good with his male characters, especially the differences between the fortysomething Christian, who a philosophy and history teacher given to pontificating about Nietzsche, and Edwin, a financial advisor with an army of shallow, party-hearty friends. Under his brittle exterior, Edwin is haunted by the father who abandoned him. The perpetually ambivalent Christian seems to yearn for something life hasn't given him, if only he could identify it. Nevertheless, he has an amusingly cold eye for social expectations; getting nervous about their public debut as a trio, he notes, scathingly, of their friends, "If we were dating a hot twink named Mikey, they'd be high-fiving us." But Margaret stubbornly fails to come into focus: All we know about her is that she is new in town and fresh out of a long-term relationship that was on the marriage track until it derailed; otherwise, she seems remarkably accommodating. By the time it occurs to her that her role is that of a marital aid for Christian and Edwin, the thought has long seemed pretty obvious.

Fortunately, the three-person cast, under Jack Serio's detailed direction, goes a long way toward transforming this geometric arrangement into something more human. Juan Castano's Edwin is a smart aleck with a wounded heart, stunned to find himself falling in love with a woman and contemplating fatherhood; he brings a real intimacy and spontaneity to Edwin's most vulnerable moments. As Christian, the ever-dependable Ryan Spahn evokes the midlife confusion of someone who has spent "years of reading Foucault and Judith Butler, and all I want is to just be a basic gay." Julia Chan has her ways of making Margaret compelling; with each turn of the plot -- especially when she has to think about having a baby, in her forties, with two fathers -- you can feel her actively thinking, trying to game out her next move.

Proving invaluable is the decision to stage the play for a tiny audience in the ground-floor parlor of an East Village townhouse, allowing for a cinematic level of acting naturalism. Scenic designer Frank J. Oliva has stunningly fitted out the space with attractive furnishings and personal details. The intimacy of the design is a masterstroke; it's rather like being invited to sit on the stage of a Broadway comedy while it unfolds. Stacey Derosier's cunning lighting design makes inventive use of the track units in the room and theatrical units placed outside on the street, shooting through the front window. Under these circumstances, one expects a tinny, inexpensive sound system, which is why Avi Amon's fully realized work (including a notable bass presence) is so impressive. He provides a likely playlist of tunes by MGMT and Death Cab for Cutie, among others; also, he and Derosier collaborate on the combined lighting-and-sound cues that kick in whenever the action jumps ahead in time. Avery Reed's costumes draw solid lines of distinction between the male characters, but it would be nice to get Chan out of that bulky, oversized blazer that undermines her attractiveness.

Danger and Opportunity is never dull, but there's only one direction in which this situation can go, dramatically, and it's a predictable one. At times, it recalls Afterglow, about an all-male trio, which became something of a sleeper hit several seasons back; to its credit, Urban's play lacks Afterglow's peep-show aspect. Based on the subject matter and the novelty of its presentation, the production is already looking like a spring hit. Still, this is a drama about characters with luxury problems; only the very well-heeled have the time and leisure to ponder such erotic entanglements. Or, as Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg once put it, "Duets are made by the bourgeoisie-o/But only God can make a trio." I defer to them. --David Barbour