Review - The Drunken City: The Big Appletini

You know those very annoying packs of young drunkards you run into around 3am or so while wandering the bar-stuffed streets of the Lower East Side or the West Village, trying to find the nearest open pizza joint or Gray's Papaya in a quest to carbo-absorb the evening's alcoholic intake? The kind that insists on merrily prancing the pavement with their voice volumes set to 11 and their wits set at 3rd grade, so excited to be partying in the city? Adam Bock wrote a whole play about them! Well, maybe not a whole play... is ninety minutes a whole play? But in any case, you know something... Once you get to know these annoying brats, they're actually kinda fun to be with. At least when the things they say are written by Adam Bock and Trip Cullman directs the way they say them.

Their new romantic comedy at Playwrights Horizons, The Drunken City, is about the truths that escape our mouths when alcohol loosens inhibitions and you're in the safe company of a stranger you assume you'll never see again. It's the night before Marnie's (Cassie Beck) wedding and she and her bridesmaids - the also-engaged Linda (Sue Jean Kim) and the recently disengaged Melissa (Maria Dizzia) - are wandering about some fictitious part of Manhattan near Baxter and 2nd (????) happily loaded up on beers and shots. (word of advice: woman in bar wearing wedding veil = free beers and shots) They encounter Eddie (Barrett Foa) a tap-dancing dentist (John Carrafa choreographs his foot-work) and his buddy Frank (Mike Colter), whose dating slump since his last girlfriend dumped him is celebrating its one year anniversary.

After the usual formalities ("We're drunk!" "Whoo-hoo!" "She's getting married!" "You're cute!") Frank and Marnie impulsively start kissing. Though she tells her friends she's just getting a little innocent action before the knot is tied, the pair suddenly slips off to get some privacy. A quick phone call brings a sober voice, Marnie's employer/friend, a former marine and current baker named Bob (Alfredo Narciso), into the mix. While Marnie, who has taken shelter in a church with Frank, starts confessing doubts about her future with the man she is steadily growing less intent on marrying, Melissa and Linda frantically try to get their friend safely home while Bob and Eddie have taken the introductory steps into their own mating dance. Hurtful things are said, drastic measures are taken and with the morning hangover comes the responsibility of trying to mend the evening's wounds.

If the play turns out to be not especially deep, the evening is still atmospheric and flavorful; thanks to Bock's knack for writing in a heightened language that sounds natural and Cullman's talent for quirky realism. The funny and frisky and cast, anchored by Beck's struggle to think clearly through the fog of intoxication and effervesced by Foa's innocuous charm, is an amusing and empathetic ensemble.

Though the production values may be modest, David Korins (set), Matthew Richards (lights) and Bart Fasbender (sound) create a terrific blurred representation of late night Manhattan with a reflecting black background blinking random rectangular colors. And during those moments when one might say the earth moved; let's just say the earth moves.