Homicides and hysterics. - Vineyard Theater, New York, New York - Review - theater review

Crowd-pleaser and misanthrope Nicky Silver skewers do-gooders in his latest play

Nothing is sacred to Nicky Silver, the American theater's one-man brat pack. He uses knowledge of the real world's suffering and heartache to attack the shallowness of a culture epitomized by the energetic banality of Seinfeld--while simultaneously employing high-speed manipulation of comic stereotypes to poke fun at the very idea of taking anything seriously. A perfect marriage of crowd-pleaser and misanthrope, Silver creates a closed system, and that's the only appropriate environment for farce.

Silver's latest, The Altruists, tackles the passions and pretensions of Manhattan leftist do-gooders. Ronald (Joey Slotnick), a gay social worker who desperately wants to do good but finds poor people quite tedious, picks up a hustler, Lance (Eddie Cahill), and makes reforming the lad his mission in life. We know Ronald is political because he wears a T-shirt with a "power to the people" fist design on it. His comrades-in-arms include Cybil (Kali Rocha), a nose-ringed lesbian who shouts "Fuck the pigs!" and seems to sleep exclusively with men, and Ethan (Sam Robards), a shaggy Brit who attends rallies mainly to pick up girls. Ronald's sister Sydney (Veanne Cox), a soap opera actress who plays a character named Montana Beach, wastes no opportunity to disapprove of their slacker lives but winds up subsidizing their antics out of her weakness for Ethan's faithless stud services. In return she gets the whole gang to pin on Ronald's hustler boyfriend an unfortunate little homicide she happens to commit.

Of course, these characters bear about as much resemblance to real political activists as the characters on General Hospital do to real doctors and nurses. Silver's play is a sort of free-floating tantrum thrown after getting one too many E-mails about saving National Public Radio or letters seeking funds to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Altruists, which at press time was set to finish its limited run at the Vineyard Theatre on April 1, isn't serious enough to be labeled politically incorrect. If there's anything subversive about the play, it's that Silver assumes a world in which gays and lesbians are sufficiently ubiquitous and so accepted that they have entered the pantheon of comic types to be made fun of, alongside ethnic taxi drivers and Jewish next-door neighbors.

If you tried to play The Altruists with an ounce of realism, it would be ghastly. Silver's longtime designated director, David Warren, properly stages it in the classic style of Pee-wee's Playhouse: bright colors, a fast pace, and plenty of juvenile exuberance. The actors have a ball, none more so than Cox as the anorexic actress who gets to shout her long diatribes while wearing a Jackie Susannesque pink pantsuit. She's a tempest that's a toothpick.

Shewey is the editor of Out Front: Contemporary Gay and Lesbian Plays, published by Grove Press.

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