Theatre in Review: Strategic Love Play (Audible Theatre at Minetta Lane Theatre)The characters in Strategic Love Play consume many drinks over a running time of seventy-five minutes or so and, before very long, I was ready for a couple myself. (I would have preferred a martini or two to their endless beers but let that pass.) The impulse came from watching Helene Yorke and Michael Zegen pushing back against the dramatic standoff that playwright Miriam Battye has conceived for them: The actors (known in the script as Man and Woman) meet up for a most unpromising first date. At first glance, they don't particularly like each other. Indeed, there's an undertone of hostility running through their conversation. But both are mortally sick of putting on their game faces for total strangers, raising hopes that will end in bitter disappointment. So, they entertain the idea of getting together, if only to get out of circulation, once and for all. And, since they don't care about each other, they won't make any demands. The only response to such an artificial, frankly head-scratching, premise is, "Cocktail, please." Battye, a UK playwright making her New York debut, is working in the well-tilled ground of unromantic comedy, in which boy and girl meet but are such baskets cases that the prognosis for happiness is doubtful. (Predecessors in this long-lived genre include The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.) Such plays ask: Can singletons bruised by endless bad nights out and aborted relationships open themselves to one another? Or are they condemned to texting, swiping, and yet another round of watered-down singles bar drinks? Taken as a study of the approach/avoidance conflict, Strategic Love Play is hard to beat, its dialogue often crackling with the angry energy of the baffled and heartbroken; as a compelling comic drama, it is something less than a dream date. Yet Yorke and Zegen are so adept at embodying these wounded romantic warriors, and Battye's dialogue is, line by line, so oddly perceptive that even as it irritates it casts a certain spell. Even when I hated it, I kind of liked it. Yorke is blunt, confrontational, and ready to put the fear of God into any potential romantic partner. "Should we just hold hands and start promising shit now, so we don't have to do this bit?" she says as an opening gambit. It's putting it mildly to say she leads with her chin: "Should I say it for you: I'm vile and ugly and just bad?" she asks, adding, "These are not scary words to me; anything you think, I'll have thought it, tenfold." Behind such aggression lies a profound disappointment: "I was told All Men Would Want Me Always All The Time. That it was going to be a Huge Problem in my life. [The capitalization is the playwright's.] But very few of you do. I don't get it. Everyone was so worried about it. The only men who want me are old and in Greece and even they aren't that enthused." The script describes her as "amazing, and a nightmare," a description that is certainly half-right. Zegen, his shoulders ever so slightly hunched, prone to bursts of nervous laughter, is a nice guy with a boring job and a family he loves, an Everyguy poleaxed by losing the love of his life to an oafish competitor. He was abandoned by a subsequent girlfriend, when asked if he was crazy for her, he replied, "I have a lot of time for you." (Admit it; you'd be out the door, too, if you got a such a response from your loved one.) She fled to London and took up with a local who, Zegen notes, has "a British mouth." (As throwaway insults go, that one really stings.) Breaking up with another partner, he is informed that his body is "a catastrophe" and, even worse, he makes noises that leave her "deeply uncomfortable." They certainly don't behave that way on the Hallmark Channel. Does a quiet, simple, go-along-to-get-along guy belong with an agent provocatrice? His goal in life: "I want to RELAX. I want to be relaxed. I want to think about the fact I might be able to. One day. Maybe. Relax. Don't you?" "No! Fuck NO," she replies, forcefully. "I don't want to, like, go for WALKS and use and reuse those ZIPLOC SANDWICH BAGGIES all my life NO. I want to TEAR SOMEONE APART." They're the first couple who should apply for marriage counseling before getting engaged. Who are these people? Why are they together? Why doesn't Zegen bail at the first possible moment? Why does Yorke have any interest in someone who aspires to the milquetoast level? Maybe we're not meant to worry about such details: Arnulfo Maldonado's set design, an eerily empty bar with tables but only two chairs, and Jen Schriever's lighting, which subtly adjusts to each shift in the onstage mood, hint that Strategic Love Play is a fantasy unfolding in a psychological Purgatory where would-be lovers go for a brutal face-to-face with their shortcomings. Even so, the situation remains forced and unbelievable, and Battye's insistence on portraying the singles scene as a blasted heath of betrayals and bitter recriminations becomes wearying. Still, Zegen, throwing away lines with casual expertise, executing a nifty magic trick with a bag of potato chips, and, at last, erupting into a fury at being emotionally prodded, is strangely compelling. Yorke, delivering brutal assessments with a smile, making her most bellicose moves with a vaudevillian zest, is an intriguing enigma: Does she really mean what she says? Is she merely trying to get a rise out of Zegen? Or is she digging into her (and his) pain to get at a deeper truth? The actors skate around the play's unworkable premise like Olympic finalists, keeping us guessing about their motivations -- a tribute to them, and the skill of director Katie Posner. Other plus factors include Dede Ayite's costumes, which suit the characters perfectly, and Tei Blow's sound design, which hints at bustling social activity just offstage. There's probably no way to bring this psychological checkmate to a satisfying resolution; Battye boxes herself in, creating a no-exit situation that can only end where it started. In any case, Strategic Love Play seems to exist largely as a vessel for the author's reports from the sexual battlefield. (Despite its many theatrical antecedents, the play might be considered the stage equivalent of sad-girl literature, the genre made newly popular by Sally Rooney and others, in which heroines feel abject because nothing lives up to their expectations.) Still, it has plenty to say and two gifted actors to say it. You may not love it, but you won't be bored.--David Barbour 
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