Red Light Winter / Some Girl(s)

Two interesting plays, Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter and Neil LaBute's Some Girl(s), have just been published by Faber and Faber. Both had respectable runs off-Broadway, although, in my view, LaBute's should have been longer and Rapp's much shorter.

What they have in common is that they are, after a fashion, revenge plays, in which women get even with a man who has wronged them. What they don't have in common is credibility: I totally disbelieve Red Light Winter.

Rapp's play begins in a shabby Amsterdam hotel room, where two youngish Americans have come on their Grand Tour. Matt, 30, is a hopeful playwright; Davis, 30ish, as of recently a very successful editor in a publishing house. They have been friends since school days.

In their great difference lies the first, albeit least, improbability. Davis is a mean, arrogant womanizer, self-assured at whatever he does, which includes patronizing his pal. Matt, conversely, is a sensitive soul, timid to the point of being suicidal, who has had only one affair, with Sarah, whom Davis has stolen from him. Matt, unassuming, indeed nerdy, has forgiven him even for that.

Though it is barely possible that they might travel together, here the discrepancy is ludicrously exaggerated into travesties of their respective types. So Davis speaks almost exclusively in obscenity-studded provocations, while Matt stammers in the jargon that has swept America, full of "like," "I mean," "you know," "whatever," "totally," etc.

Why would a supersensitive, highly educated, intelligent budding playwright—and likely authorial alter ego—be so banal? If intended as a facile way of indicating nerdiness, it is far too meretricious.

The third character is Christina, 25. A Bard student from a good Baltimore family who pretends to be French, she went to Paris in her sophomore year and became the trophy wife of a rich homosexual lawyer who wanted a beard. (Does today's Parisian smart set require such camouflage?) For six months she lives a high-toned life with him there; for the other six, she is one of those Amsterdam prostitutes soliciting from a red-light-district window. No explanation given.

After a stint with her, Davis has Christina come over for a session with Matt. A year later, having fallen for Davis and on her way to Baltimore, she comes to Matt's paltry East Village apartment, the address Davis gave her as his own. She discovers that Matt has fallen in love with her, to the degree of sleeping with the dress she wore for sexual stimulation in Amsterdam, and somehow forgot when she left.

Matt lovingly remembers everything and is respectful and helpful. Davis drops in, while Matt is buying food for the girl, hardly remembers anything and then proves callous, even vicious. So Annie (her real name) who now has AIDS, kisses him eagerly and lets him have brutal sex with her—melodrama at its most flagrant.

Only the rave reviews the play got from most New York critics could almost make you believe in such preposterousness as it peddles. But only almost.

About Some Girl(s), on the other hand, the only thing you might seriously question is that "s" in parentheses. LaBute's play is about a young man who goes by the rather generic name Guy. He revisits four major ex-girlfriends—as well as several others we don't see—prior to his forthcoming marriage to some other girl.

His ostensible motive is to apologize and somehow make up for the breakups, even if they were not one-sided, although as one girl says, "I guess they were not so 'mutual' as you remembered." [IMG:R]The more likely reason is curiosity about how or whether they have thrived since. And perhaps also to kiss his past good-bye and prove to himself how much better off he is marrying a young student nurse. And, worse yet, to look for new materials for a tell-all story like the one he recently published, and which some of the girls were not thrilled by.

But his hopes of winning retroactive points by gentlemanly behavior are dashed: Each of the four women repays him in her own way as reconciliation turns into retaliation. Sam (Samantha) in their native Seattle was the typical college sweetheart expecting postgraduate marriage. Having no taste for commitment, Guy escaped to grad school in Chicago and a new involvement, leaving behind a deeply hurt Sam. Now unbrilliantly married and a multiple mother, her chief response is a hard slap in Guy's face.

Tyler, in Chicago, is a free spirit, nonintellectual and promiscuous. She and Guy enjoyed some often kinky sex, and their breakup apparently suited her just as much as him. Still, while being amused by his impending marriage, she manages to seduce him all over again, doubtless making him feel guilty about it.

In Boston, where Guy was a college instructor, he had a clandestine adulterous affair with an older colleague, Lindsay, married to another academic. When their carryings-on were discovered, Guy fled and left her to face the music alone. Now, in cahoots with her husband, she humiliates Guy in a, for them, amusing fashion.

Finally, in Los Angeles, there is Bobbi, about whose identical twin, Billi, Guy had some guilty fantasies well before the breakup. She gets even by sweetly giving him a wedding present, the kindest or unkindest cut of all. After she amicably leaves, Guy gets a call from his fiancée, to whom he lies and makes sweet.

LaBute scores variously. While all scenes feature equally fascinating dialogue, each "girl" has a highly individual language and personality. The Tyler scene, moreover, is a perfect comic gem in which psychological insight and steady humor blend irresistibly.

Though basically a cad, Guy tries to be decent, but bumbles and stumbles on telltale lapses. Smart enough to notice his own mistakes, he is particularly amusing in his pathetic attempts to recover via compliments.

The set design is ingenious. As Guy stays in hotels of the same chain, the rooms in which the encounters take place are marked by slight shifts of the scenery to the left, along with minor changes in the furnishings. A big change is in LaBute himself, whose previous plays and movies tended to imply an overt or hidden misogyny. Here we get the total reverse.

But there is one detail I don't know how to interpret. All the female names could easily have been masculine: Sam, Tyler, Lindsay, Bobbi, Billi, and in a scene included in the book but justly omitted onstage, Reggie. Whether this tells us something about Guy, LaBute, or women today, I would dearly like to know.