Feb 15, 2008

'Boy Gets Girl' ... then boy won't let her go

By John Angell Grant / Theater Reviewer

Call Security: Men and women are trying to date.

That's how it goes in Rebecca Gilman's spooky play "Boy Gets Girl," running at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose. This is the disturbing story of a normal appearing guy from a blind date who turns out to be an increasingly worrisome stalker.

In "Boy Gets Girl," two yuppie Manhattanites meet for a drink, she a magazine writer and he a software guy. They've been fixed up by a mutual friend. He seems nice enough, if a little bland.

As Theresa loses interest in Tony over a couple of casual meetings and a couple of phone calls, he turns out to be an obsessive, self-absorbed, egomaniacal, self-pitying freak with a violent streak, who begins to stalk her. As Tony morphs into this psycho, the police get involved.

"Boy Gets Girl" is an angry play. It appears to make the statement that all men are potential stalkers because women with big breasts fascinate them.

Though not particularly well-written, the play's important issues often trump the writing limitations. The story's horror components are its best asset. It has a strong ending.

The big limitation to "Boy Gets Girl" is its wide world of cliche. Everything in the story is filled with it.

There is cliche in the boy/girl relationships, and in ongoing references to work, journalism, literature, sports, Manhattan life, the film business and more.

The singles ad platitudes spoken by daters Theresa and Tony in the opening scene's first blind date are one endless cliche.

The play's references to Manhattan are cliche (MOMA, the East Seventies). Recurring references to sports are cliche (Yankees this, Yankees that).

The editorial workplace of magazine writer Theresa is a massive cliche. As a supposedly successful journalist, Theresa's superficial initial interview with a film director for a story is laughable.

Later in a follow-up interview with the same man, Theresa walks off in a huff when things start to blow up, just when any real reporter would be focusing to pull out the good stuff.
The play's rampant cliche makes its world feel unauthentic. The words that come out of the characters' mouths sound like ideas recited from the pages of books.

Additionally, as the story progresses, the evolving behaviors of Theresa and stalker Tony don't flow organically from character information earlier established. Plus everyone feels guilty about sex.

Out of this mix, "Boy Gets Girl" features a lot of authorial finger-pointing: If only you would behave the way that I know is best, then the world would be a better place.
It's up to the actors and director, then, to create some kind of real human interaction from this fabric of cliche.

One of the play's best elements is actor ej Taylor's selling of her character Theresa's increasingly intimate relationship with a soft-core porn film director during a series of encounters that start as an interviewing assignment.

Elsewhere, "Boy Gets Girl" comes most humanly into focus at one striking moment when Theresa confesses she hasn't had very good experiences in her life as a woman. This moment of honesty breaks movingly through the cliches.

That information comes late in the play, offered in a short trickle that's staunched almost immediately. It's a rare moment when "Boy Gets Girl" doesn't feel like it's written by an outsider who does not participate in life.

Elsewhere, actor Melissa Quine does some amusing comedy work as a dizzy blonde secretary. That character, of course, is a cliche, but Quine gives her heart and humor.

The take-away from "Boy Gets Girl" is this: Men, remember that you're all stalkers. Women, get ready to call Security. As for the dating thing, it's hopeless.

Rating: Three stars

E-mail John Angell Grant at jagplays@dailynewsgroup.com.