The characters of Marc Ardito’s Over It are babes in the woods of Wall Street. Twentysomething corporate hustlers and hangers-on, they bark orders into telephones while tracking the minute machinations of the Market on their computer screens. They do coffee and drinks and one another. They march to the various drummers of sex and money and edgy friendship, exuding differing degrees of distrust and bravado. But at the end of the day, they all want to be able to square their shoulders, look Mr. Rogers straight in the tie and sweater, and say, " I like me. "
No kidding, the characters in this play really say that, over and over, like a mantra — some with callow, unthinking confidence, others more tentatively, as if groping for self-esteem. But it’s clear that Over It is a work by and for a generation raised on the importance of " feeling good about yourself. " The piece has strengths, however, chief among them sharp, staccato dialogue that is clever and depicts the jumpiness among the play’s five characters.
Tuck and Matt are traders who share an office, the former a smug, macho type pumped up on making money, the latter a more morose and sensitive gladiator not yet over a relationship that broke up two years earlier. The hapless third fellow is Billy, a runner on the Exchange floor mired in ex-athlete dreams and serious debt to his bookie. The women are Helen, a failed playwright working as a Wall Street temp who’s the object of Tuck’s sexual and financial seduction, and Annie, who has one foot in a burnt-out live-in relationship with Billy and the other in the gym where she’s sleeping with her trainer. These two are one-time friends who, in the opening scene, renew their acquaintance, exchanging such observations as (on the pros and cons of cohabitation) " Morning sex is nice, but a clean sink means more " and " One of the advantages of a vagina is that men are constantly looking for one. "
As is revealed in a Tarantino-meets-Feydeau second-act climax, there are more connections among the five than at first appear. These are surprising but not wholly buyable. More awkward is Ardito’s attempt to infuse the play, especially toward the end, with a post–September 11 sensibility it probably lacked when he wrote it. Helen walks into the office of Tuck and Matt and remarks on the " nice new view of the river, " later she alludes to the way in which people are suddenly " launching themselves at each other in a desperate bid for security. " But most of the play has a millennial, sad-dog-eat-sad-dog feel permeated by forlorn sophistication and monetary lust. Even Helen, sick of starving and floundering artistically, falls under the spell of Tuck and his cash-driven karma — until a one-day 440-point " standard market adjustment " sends her into panic mode.
The Next Stages production marks not only the world premiere of Ardito’s play but the inaugural effort of the new theater company, which is " committed to identifying and producing work by and with emerging artists that deals with the social and global concerns facing their generation. " The founders of the troupe are Matt August, currently associate director of the national tour of the Broadway musical The Full Monty, and Justin Waldman, whose day job is as assistant to Huntington Theatre Company artistic director Nicholas Martin. Martin directed a staged reading of Over It at Playwrights Horizons in New York, and the new troupe is performing in a bare-bones space that serves as the Huntington’s rehearsal hall. Its cadre of artists ranges from recent Boston University School of Theatre Arts grads (even a couple of undergrads) to young Equity actors.
Waldman is at the helm of Over It, which, though short on fancy production values (it would be nice if we couldn’t see that Matt’s computer is turned off), has a strong cast. Helen McElwain brings a tasty deadpan to playwright Helen, a fish out of water even as she nibbles Tuck’s bait. And Trey Burvant is all agitated confidence as the fast-talking Tuck. Cortney Keim gives a pixie toughness to the hip, undirected Annie, and Eric Anderson is amiably pathetic as coked-up, mediocrity-haunted Billy, who can foist only a small portion of his self-loathing off on Nike. Tommy Day Carey is a soulful Matt, who in one of the play’s better riffs spins a fanciful tale of real-estate longing that ends in violence. Ardito has talent, but Over It needs to become more consistently plausible and less sentimental before it can say, with real justification, " I like me. "
