Theatre in Review: Phoenix (Cherry Lane Theatre)

	Julia Stiles, James Wirt. Photo: Harry Fellows

Apparently abortion is the newest meet-cute premise in romantic comedies. Only a few weeks ago, people were talking about the film Obvious Child, in which the heroine tries to sort out her love life while planning the termination of her unwanted pregnancy. Now comes Phoenix; Scott Organ's two-hander begins with his putative lovers, Sue and Bruce, getting together a month after their first meeting, which culminated in a one-night stand. Bruce, who feared he had been forgotten, is thrilled to see her again. However, the highly organized Sue has three points to make: (1) the date was "better than most;" (2) they can never see each other again; and (3) when Bruce was told by the doctor that he was infertile, he was misinformed.

Yes: Sue is pregnant. Just to get the technical details out of the way, they used protection that night, but Bruce, who doesn't get lucky as often as he would like, apparently isn't too fastidious about using condoms that are past their sell-by dates. ("I am so sick of you bad-mouthing my condoms," says Bruce, in a line I never thought I'd hear.) If nothing else, Phoenix has some useful birth control tips for the youngsters in the audience: Kids, throw out those oldies!

Sue simply wants to impart the information and run, but Bruce, who is a tad overwhelmed at this news, coaxes her into talking it over with him on the phone. Then he gets her reluctant permission to accompany her to the clinic. This leads to more flirting, another sexual encounter, an all-night chat about the meaning of life, and an inappropriate outburst from Bruce in the waiting room, at which point Sue gives him his walking papers -- but if you can't see where this is headed, you obviously don't get to the theatre much.

In tracking Bruce and Sue's long and rocky road to something that might possibly be love, Organ occasionally shows a deft hand with his characters' amusingly unintentional moments of honesty. Recalling their participation in a trivia contest, Bruce notes that Sue is "very trivial minded," wincing in agony at the accidentally left-handed compliment. Carried away during one of their more furious arguments, Sue says, "I confuse you? You should see what I do to myself!" There's also a clever bit in which Bruce pretends to be a creationist, just to rattle Sue's cage a little bit.

Yet Phoenix never really gives us reason to believe that Sue and Bruce belong together -- or to care. The characters are diaphanously thin, a schematically rendered pair of opposites equally lacking in the little details that would make them come alive. In order to show Sue's fear of commitment, she is given a rather odd career as a temporary nurse, moving from one three-month-long job to another. (As the play begins, she is headed to Phoenix for her next gig; thus, the play's title. Bruce has to drive three hours to meet her there for her procedure.) Oddly, for a member of a caring profession, Sue has a distinctly Hobbesian view of humanity, announcing, "Our baser nature is our base nature," and that we live in "a godless universe."

Except for the scant details of a tragedy in Bruce's past, we know even less about him. His is a much sunnier and more whimsical nature, best expressed in a scene in which he pretends to be a time traveler. (This is in response to Sue, who thinks humanity is doomed, the proof of it being that we haven't been visited by anyone from the future. Don't ask.) "In the future, having a child, you know, is so much easier," he says, "because most people travel back in time to take care of themselves as babies." If this kind of cutesy chatter puts you on edge, Phoenix is not the play for you.

Julia Stiles works hard, and generally successfully, to make the cool, self-involved Sue into a reasonably appealing presence, even as she warily circles Bruce, insisting that she wants no involvements. James Wirt's natural charm and warmth go a long way toward defusing many of Bruce's more cloying traits. But with each successive scene, you feel the playwright straining to find a reason to keep them together. By the final scene, when the dialogue has descended into lines like, "Do you want to take off your coat?" followed by "Do you want me to take off my coat?" they have become an actively irritating pair.

Neither performer gets much help from the director, Jennifer DeLia, who, among other things, has trouble with some of the basic mechanics of staging. For example, each scene ends with a blackout, followed by an awkward pause, then the start of the incidental music that signals the next scene change. It's a notably clunky sequence of events that repeats over and over. (Organ, who doesn't care about giving his scenes strong finishes, isn't much help here.)

The production design is also distinctly odd. Caite Hevner Kemp's set places the action on a sparsely furnished platform that is turned manually, by the actors, after each scene. It's a perfectly workable setup, but it's backed by a series of garish collages by the painter Burton Machen, which feature photographic images (of the stars, the Grand Canyon, and other scenes) smeared with bright bursts of color and glitter. They steal focus without adding anything. Rick Carmona's lighting could be crisper and more detailed. Amit Gajwani's costumes are not particularly flattering to Stiles, although Wirt's T-shirts-and-jeans wardrobe suits him well. The best work comes from the sound designer, Janie Bullard, who provides solid reinforcement for the highly appealing incidental music by Leisure Cruise along with a wide variety of effects (phones, buzzers, crickets, cars passing).

Phoenix certainly earns points for trying to give the romantic comedy -- a once-popular theatrical genre that has fallen into disuse -- a contemporary spin. But the result is bland and a little boring, and not just because the far better Sex with Strangers opened last week. Late in the play, when they are yet again hashing out their relationship, Sue protests that she and Bruce don't really know anything about each other; trouble is, at the end of more than 90 minutes of dialogue, neither do we.--David Barbour