If you want to score easy laughs, put a wacky dance in your play. Having characters trip on acid is another time-tested recipe.
“Better safe than sorry,” Jesse Eisenberg must have thought, so he included both in “Asuncion,” his off-Broadway playwriting debut.
And yet the show’s not as funny as it should be.
The Oscar-nominated lead of “The Social Network” didn’t give himself must of an acting challenge as Edgar, an aspiring journalist who takes political correctness to pompous extremes.
Edgar shares an apartment with his former TA, Vinny (Justin Bartha, ace in “Lend Me a Tenor”), a grad student with a master’s in black studies. A cocky, goateed pothead who plays easy-listening on an electric keyboard, Vinny lords it over his adoring roommate.
“I think of you like my idol,” Edgar tells him, “like who I want to be when I’m you.”
This dysfunctional bromance is thrown out of whack after the boys agree to host Asuncion (Camille Mana), the new wife of Edgar’s older brother, Stuart (Remy Auberjonois). Like Edgar and Vinny, we need to accept the request on blind faith — when the reason finally emerges, it makes little sense.
Because she’s pretty, from the Philippines and met Stuart online, Edgar assumes Asuncion is a prostitute and plots to write an exposé about her tragic life. He writes down her every move, but never directly asks her anything.
Edgar’s too egocentric to actually communicate: “You’re selfish, but you call it depression,” Stuart points out.
As an actor, Eisenberg has a narrow range — geeky, fidgety, self-conscious — but he’s baked it to golden perfection. Edgar’s defensive posture, hands tucked in his armpits, perfectly sums him up. Which is good, because not much happens to him.
Similarly, Bartha and Mana are funny, but have little to do.
“Asuncion” shows enough promise to make us look forward to Eisenberg’s follow-up, but next time he may want to think about, you know, a plot.