Never Tell

A couple of the male characters in James Christy’s Never Tell — which starts out frantic and eventually goes off the deep end — are such unregenerate heels, it’s as if the rampant ill-will in Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men or Your Friends & Neighbors had burst and extraneous misogynists and misanthropists were catapulted in this direction.

One of these heels is Will (Matthew Wilkas), curator of a controversial art gallery exhibit that features a videotaped rape of mysterious origin Will has been married for some time to gallery owner-rich girl Anna (Teresa L. Goding) but also craves Anna’s troubled pal Liz (Eva Kaminsky). The other crumb in this very contemporary upside-down cake is Hoover (Mark Setlock); he has a line for every lady he meets when he’s not working side by side with Manny (Jason Schuchman), whose productivity as a computer programmer is the catalyst for this story of double-dealing by members of Generations X, Y, and Z.

The monomaniacal Manny, who broke up with Liz eight years ago and still hasn’t recovered from it, has come up with what might be called a “user unfriendly” computer application: It analyzes the information someone puts into his or her computer and delivers a personality profile that could be very useful to retailers and marketers. This subplot explains the Rorschach-like inkblot employed as the show’s logo and as the design that costumer Rebecca Lustig has made conspicuous on one of Hoover’s jerseys. Meanwhile, animated Rorschach blots show up on the column of video monitors that set designer J. Wiese has positioned at the stage left proscenium. (Video artist Jito Lee is creative in filling their screens with images.) A separate, Nam June Paik-influenced stack of eviscerated monitors stands stage right.

Supposedly, the five characters under scrutiny in Never Tell are chummy, but their manners and mores — shown in two acts containing numerous fast-paced scenes — are extremely iffy. By the time Will, Hoover, and Liz have finished serving their own interests, and Manny and Liz are left to ponder what has occurred, playwright Christy has gotten a few things off his chest about ethical, unethical, even criminal behavior in the modern world. He has also expressed a few thoughts about miscommunication, whether among humans or between humans and machines.

So agitated is Christy about how people rationalize their behavior that the various scenes of the play become increasingly unbelievable, particularly those involving the devious Hoover and the reality-challenged Liz. Stretching credibility further is the seemingly intelligent Anna’s blind spot about her hubby and Liz. But the betrayal manifested by the one older character, a company executive called Charkle (John Rengstorff), is all too credible.

Christy also utilizes a flawed character-analysis ploy. Every so often, one of the five focal figures steps out of the action to recall a sexual-awakening incident — each of which occurred, by great coincidence, when the person was 14. Not one of these recollections is especially positive; a couple of them are disturbing. It’s implied that the reported events explain why the characters, now 30-ish, are so terribly screwed-up. (This kind of writing recalls Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound deductions, which were passé even when that film was new in 1945.)

It’s often the case that plays featuring young casts turn into acting showcases, and Never Tell is a good example of this. The performers do lots of heavy lifting in such a way as to make it seem like light lifting. Kaminsky, in the nearly impossible role of Liz, does everything within her considerable power to make believable a woman who snaps out of a deep depression when Mr. Wrong barges through her door. As the conniving Hoover, Setlock exhibits just the right amount of sleazy charm. Wilkas has the proper golden-boy looks for Will, and he knows how to use both his natural and refined assets to suit the play’s cynical purposes. Goding is yet another plus for the production, although not even a performer as skilled as she seems to be could render Anna’s obtuseness convincingly. In smaller roles, John Rengstorff, Michael Blum, and Lori Garrabrant lubricate matters.

Incidentally, the numerous laptop computers used in Never Tell are Macs. This is a nice commercial for the enterprising Apple outfit, but it would be even nicer if the play were better written.