Theatre in Review: Really Really (MCC Theatre at Lucille Lortel Theatre)Paul Downs Colaizzo, a first-time playwright, certainly isn't afraid of a provocative premise. He also has a knack for plot twists; in fact, he twists his debut work, Really Really, into a pretzel before he's done, which has the unfortunate effect of undermining the play's theme. Rule #1: You can drop only so many bombshells before there's nothing left on stage but scorched earth. Really Really begins on a teasing note of ambiguity, with a wordless scene showing a pair of college-age young ladies returning home from what was clearly a big night. Dressed, in the fashion of the day, like call girls -- strapped into body-hugging micro-minis and teetering on the highest of heels --they are clearly much the worse for wear. One of them is bleeding profusely from her right hand; the other keeps checking her phone for (nonexistent) messages every five seconds. They stagger off to their rooms, and from offstage, we hear retching. It's a bold, bizarre way to kick off a play, and, from the get-go, Colaizzo has piqued our interest. Things get even more interesting when we meet Cooper and Davis, college roommates who staged an epic kegger the night before. Davis, long on the shelf thanks to a bad breakup, finally got laid at the party, and Cooper and Johnson (another friend) want the details. Davis is oddly tentative, however, and reluctant to share; is he simply being a gentleman? Next, we see the ladies of the first scene, Grace and Leigh, and we learn that Leigh was Cooper's sex partner. Grace, too, wants the details; with no little jealousy, she recalls how avidly Leigh targeted Cooper at the party. But Leigh, like Cooper, has little or nothing to say. What exactly is going on? The first of many pennies drops when Jimmy, Leigh's boyfriend, gets wind of the encounter and confronts her, furious that the pregnant Leigh (you didn't know that, did you?), his fiancée in all but name, has gotten drunk and slept with one of his friends. Leigh furiously responds with her side of the story: What, really happened, she says, is Davis raped her, and she subsequently miscarried. As it happens, Davis was so drunk he can't remember a thing. All of this makes for a gripping first act, as our perceptions of what really happened are subject to constant revision. But the shockers keep coming: Even as the details of the encounter remain hazy, wounded, poor-as-a-church-mouse Leigh is revealed to be a master of the double cross; she is the evil twin of Carol, the frustrated college student of David Mamet's Oleanna, who, having been raised in an abusive and chaotic family situation, is simmering with class resentments and is avid to land a husband who promises a big payday. (In an amusing twist, Leigh is played by Zosia Mamet, currently of the HBO series Girls and daughter of Oleanna author David Mamet.) (Actually, the character Leigh most resembles is Pamela Barnes Ewing, AKA Rebecca Sutter, one of the lead schemers on Dallas -- who once an episode looks deeply into some poor sucker's eyes and asks why she can't be forgiven for various acts of theft, blackmail, and murder. Take Leigh out of that H&M wardrobe, slip her into something more comfortable, and she could make life into a living hell for the Ewing family. But I digress.) Before anyone slaps Colaizzo with a charge of misogyny with extreme prejudice, however, it is important to note that Leigh, for all her eye-popping double-dealing has plenty of company -- everyone in Really Really has a self-interested agenda to pursue; Leigh is merely better at it than most. The play is a group portrait of "Generation Me," young people whose titanic sense of entitlement has slammed up against a recession-riddled economy and an era of diminished expectations. As a result, they are hell-bent on getting ahead by any means necessary. Even as it looks like the characters will drown in soap suds, Really Really remains watchable thanks to the canny direction of David Cromer and a solid cast of newcomers. Cromer keeps the action moving at a thankfully fast pace, but he also punctuates the action with a series of pregnant pauses that keep you guessing what the characters are really thinking. One such moment, a silent, morning-after look between a pair of casual lovers is particularly hair-raising, as is the one when Jimmy first learns that Leigh has been unfaithful; watching the terrible truth dawn on the face of Evan Jonigkeit, who plays Jimmy, is a searing experience. Jonigkeit is only one member of a cast without a single weak link. Zosia Mamet's Leigh is predator and victim all rolled into one, her deadpan line readings frequently building into tornadoes of malice and fury. Matt Lauria's Davis seems genuinely baffled, but he also offers alarming hints of violence that keep us on edge. Aleque Reid is impressive as Leigh's even more acquisitive sister; for her sins, she has to cope with the play's single most unbelievable twist, involving a lie that inexplicably turns out to be true. As Leigh's roommate, burdened with delivering the play's theme in a series of scenes set at a youth leadership conference, Lauren Culpepper provides some welcome humor, creating an amusing sketch of the kind of overachiever who has been aiming for National Honor Society membership since kindergarten; she also must deal with an eleventh-hour revelation that comes out of nowhere. At the performance I attended, Kobi Libii, who plays Johnson, was out; his role was taken by none other than Colaizzo himself, who, I think I can safely say, delivered an authoritative performance. In order to keep things moving at a fast clip, David Korins has come up with a clever set design featuring a pair of walls plus some basic furniture pieces that can be rearranged in less than a minute to create a different location. David Weiner, the lighting designer, carves out different looks for each location and adds a pleasing noirish ambiance to the scene changes. Sarah Laux's costumes are thoroughly authentic examples of the way college kids dress now. Daniel Kluger's sound design provides a solid vehicle for his original compositions -- his use of electronic dance music lends an especially up-to-date note -- and sound effects. It's worth nothing that Colaizzo is only 26, and he wrote Really Really when he was 21, which may explain the play's overly determined plot fireworks; clearly he was out to make a big impression, and fast. With that in mind, Really Really is a promising piece of work, and he has been lucky in getting Cromer to give it the best possible airing. There's good reason to hope that his next play will retain the urgency of his writing while tamping down the hysteria of his narrative. Just because you're loaded with bombshells doesn't mean you have to fire them off all at once.--David Barbour 
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