If it’s sympathetic characters you crave, skip “Really Really.” This campus-set show presents its 21-year-olds as materialistic, selfish, narcissistic, manipulative and glibly coarse.
It’s enough to make you think of “Jersey Shore” as a refreshing, life-affirming palate cleanser.
The plot of Paul Downs Colaizzo’s New York debut revolves around a sadly banal issue. Leigh (Zosia Mamet, from TV’s “Girls”) got really drunk at a party, and hooked up with the equally bombed, all-American rugby player Davis (Matt Lauria, “Friday Night Lights”). The next day, she tells her boyfriend, Jimmy (Evan Jonigkeit), that she was raped; Davis denies it, though he says he can’t remember anything.
Every five minutes or so, Colaizzo adds another twist to the deeply messed-up premise. The show, staged by hot director David Cromer (“Tribes,” “Our Town”), is a minefield of spoiler alerts.
These people betray each other, make stuff up and cut moral corners because that’s what you have to do to get ahead. Further hitting the nail on its ugly head, Leigh’s roommate, Grace (Lauren Culpepper), spells out her generation’s approach in a speech at a Future Leaders of America conference: “What can I do to make this work? In any situation, what can I do to get what I want?”
And that’s the play’s most sympathetic character. But then, Grace can afford to take a higher road than Leigh, who grew up dirt-poor with an abusive father. She and her sister, Haley (Aleque Reid), crave the comforts they never had.
Colaizzo targets all income levels. Among the wealthy, Davis and Jimmy are pumped with entitlement as well as feelings of victimization.
“You’re rich,” Davis’ friend Cooper (David Hull) tells him. “You’re white. You shouldn’t have a problem.”
“That works against me,” Davis replies. “Don’t you get that?”
The poor aren’t idealized, either. Haley is a white-trash caricature and Leigh’s survival instinct verges on sociopathy. Mamet plays her with dead eyes and a blank, dogged intensity, and she and Culpepper form a troubling yin/yang unit against the muscle-bound bros.
The hopeless, profanity-laden nihilism on display has prompted comparisons to Neil LaBute, but Colaizzo’s dialogue isn’t nearly as punchy.
Still, there’s promise in “Really Really” — if only because the show holds your attention just as you hold your nose.