Buddy System

by Mark Cofta

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Published: Feb 17, 2010

A palpable feeling exists in the audience of a Bruce Graham play: the tingling sense of people eagerly awaiting reasons to laugh. They come often, as fans of the prolific local playwright know, making his skillful, subtle build from funny stuff to "eternal questions" in his new play, Any Given Monday, all the more impressive. Any Given Monday, co-produced by Theatre Exile and Ambler's Act II Playhouse, introduces Lenny (Joe Canuso), a veteran middle-school teacher who lacks, in the words of daughter Sara (Genevieve Perrier), "edge" and "insouciance." Mickey (Peter Pryor), Lenny's outspoken, hard-drinking, blue-collar buddy, contrasts Lenny's more civilized restraint ("You're the only guy I know," he tells Lenny, "who steps out of the shower to take a leak") with politically incorrect commentary on everything from football to the homeless and, most pointedly, the departure of Lenny's wife of 24 years, Risa (Catharine K. Slusar).

Midlife crisis causes Risa to run off with Frank, a Walmart builder and butt of many jokes, but Any Given Monday turns deadly serious when Mickey takes action to help Lenny, and Sara, a philosophy major, seizes this opportunity to examine "a moral question in action." Don't we all want to kill at some point? Would we, if we could get away with it?

Director Harriet Power's brisk production isn't served well by Dirk Durosette's artsy, unlived-in living room set: What English teacher's home has no visible books? Alison Roberts' costumes show a sly wit, though, that matches the play's complications.

Romantic comedy and dark satire collide convincingly when Lenny and Risa finally debate their marriage. Canuso's Lenny reaches the boiling point Sara and Mickey insist is necessary, and Slusar's uncertainty (her infidelity, she admits, defies all logic) is equally believable. Perrier and Pryor use Graham's comic insights well — she, in chatty monologues to the audience; he, in rants to Lenny — but their charms never overweigh the central issue (one of those "eternal questions") of how a married couple survive together. In a (hopefully) far-fetched situation, they find very real solutions.

Through Feb. 28, $15-$40, Theatre Exile at Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey St., 215-218-4022, theatreexile.org; March 3-28, $25-$30, Act II Playhouse, 56 E. Butler Ave., Ambler, 215-654-0200, act2.org.

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