September 20, 2001

3 MEN & THEIR BABES
By Donald Lyons

Every now and again a play finally finds a group of people who know what it needs. The recent revival of Craig Lucas' "Blue Window" offered such an instance of an '80s drama getting the right juice, the right pace that it lacked in earlier productions.

Now comes Howard Korder's 1988 "Boys' Life." I didn't see the original production at Lincoln Center, so I can only say that the current revival extracts the core of the play in a brilliant way.

It's a look at three youngish male friends as they negotiate the rapids of sex and commitment. It's familiar territory, explored in David Mamet's "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" and any episode of "Friends," to name just a few examples.

But Korder finds a tempo and a tone that work; the three guys moan and get high and lament together, and then each separately tries to connect with women. Phil, played with a whiny, desperate but winning intelligence by Andrew J. Hoff, is the classic loser; he tries to hook up with a neurotic woman and later tells us of a shameful episode with a passed-out girl.

His pal Jack is the cynical user, horny, smart and nihilistic; he's married, it turns out, but never willing to let a meeting in the park go to waste. The excellent Leo Lauer lets us glimpse Jack's combativeness and sexual voracity as ways of holding on to youth.

The swing guy is Don, who actually finds a grown-up woman in Lisa and appreciates her, but later betrays her. Don is perfectly understood by Jeremy Koch, and Lisa is given a real presence by Jeslyn Kelly.

The tension, under the playful direction of Drew Decorleto, is beautifully kept up by a ball bounced between Jack and Phil. (This is, finally, a guys' play.)

In the final scene, at Don's wedding, Jack is making sarcastic remarks about his and Phil's table by the kitchen and trying to persuade Phil (or, failing him, Don) to lend him an apartment for an affair he's having. Phil, distraught, is brought to a decision.

The play may not be blindingly original in plot, but it is believably written and, above all, it is brought to hilarious, sad, vivid life by the spot-on performances of Hoff, Lauer and Koch as an all-too-recognizable trio of trying males.

BOYS' LIFE
At the PC2, 616 Ninth Ave., at 44th Street. Through Sept. 30. Call (212) 496-3743.