STAGE REVIEW : A Nasty Reality From ‘Extra Man’

Richard Greenberg may go down in theatrical annals as the chronicler of the middle-class American urban guerrillas of the end of the 20th Century. An unseemly bunch taken as a whole, but Greenberg gets down to specific, clinical cases.

In his latest play, “The Extra Man,” which opened over the weekend at South Coast Repertory, people do lunch, parties and sex less for fun than as a routine verification that they still exist. But what really quickens their pulse is gossip--that peculiarly recondite and virulent kind of cold war diplomacy known here as friendship.

Where Greenberg’s first widely accepted and witty play, “Eastern Standard,” exploded the glossy myths and tinny philanthropies of a self-involved group of upper-class yuppies holed up on Long Island, “Extra Man’s” denizens are rooted in a nastier reality.

Life among these white pseudo-sophisticates in the canyons and caves of present-day New York City is as perilous and thick with intrigue as the rarefied 18th-Century world inhabited by the sexual jousters of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” And Keith, the entitled extra man of “The Extra Man,” everybody’s helpful friend and a mystery figure who purports to write books and have a lover named Katherine, is at least as treacherous as “Les Liaisons’ ” aristocratic Valmont.

Unlike Valmont, Keith does not seduce young virgins for the hell of it, but he does other unspeakable things. His specialty is voyeurism--the manipulation of other people’s lives for whatever gratification he vicariously derives from the resulting havoc.

The world of “The Extra Man,” a play commissioned by SCR, drips with a pious hypocrisy that infects and engulfs the lives of the circle of friends we meet--Keith, his attractive young editor Laura, her husband Daniel, their friend Jess--and the ones that we only hear about, but who are surprisingly present in a snippy, cartoonish way. All but Daniel, “Extra Man’s” sacrificial lamb, are in some categorical way unlikable. And all are just as depressingly real.

Keith is a snake in the grass; Laura is as careless an editor as she is a wife; Jess is a self-centered film critic and insecure whiner. All can talk circles around Daniel, a lawyer with a conscience committed to moral causes, who is reportedly as eloquent in the courtroom as he is tongue-tied everywhere else.

However one reacts to these flawed creatures, they are human, a fact not lost in the pro-play argumentation in the program. What is lost is the danger in reproducing such reality on stage.

Greenberg’s characters speak in a mix of serious inference and oblique platitudes that can be as often grating as illuminating. The first act is packed with short, flat, expository scenes in which concealment and trivia become mildly exasperating because we don’t yet know these people or where the play is going. Like life, it drags its feet while the permutations among Laura, Keith, Daniel and Jess slowly take shape.

By Act II, however, what was painstakingly laid out in Act One starts to pay off. There is some much-needed fighting back (a smart and funny scene in which Laura gives Keith a taste of his own medicine) and even a measure of redemption. A bruising, wordless moment between Daniel and Laura is the play’s deafening apotheosis, proving that pain, however inward, is never truly silent.

Greenberg leaves us unsure at play’s end that any of these people will change much or find a measure of satisfaction in their lives. And for this bit of ultimate realism we can be grateful.

Director Michael Engler (who also staged Greenberg’s “Eastern Standard” in New York) has given “The Extra Man” a compassionate, economical production, with simple but clever sets (Philip Jung) and lighting (Peter Maradudin) that don’t upstage the play or actors.

Kandis Chappell plays Laura, the object of everyone’s desire, as an attractive, selfish woman whose mix of ennui and ego allows her to be lulled by the flatteries of a faithless friend.

As that friend, Peter Frechette is consummately suave, though his fakeries start to bleed through as we get to know him. Jonathan Emerson’s Daniel is very winning as the uptight, permanently anguished Daniel, and Kario Salem’s Jess provides an intriguing combination of weakness and strength as the drifting Jess.

Together, they deliver a sauntering spectacle whose imitation of life needs some goosing in its unfolding early scenes, but whose eventual understatement about values, vacancy and the bankrupt systems by which we live ultimately give us pause.

“The Extra Man,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 24. $23-$32; (714) 957-4033). Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes. ‘The Extra Man’

Kandis Chappell:Laura

Peter Frechette:Keith

Kario Salem:Jess

Jonathan Emerson:Daniel

A new play by Richard Greenberg. Director Michael Engler. Sets Philip Jung. Lights Peter Maradudin. Costumes Candice Donnelly. Music and sound Michael Roth. Dramaturg Jerry Patch. Production manager Edward Lapine. Stage manager Julie Haber. Assistant stage manager Bonnie Lorenger.