Pizza Man

New York Times theater critic Clive Barnes once famously reviewed an Off-Broadway musical called "Smile, Smile, Smile" with the simple line "I didn't. I didn't. I didn't." Well, when it comes to "Pizza Man," an Ego Actus production of Darlene Craviotto's 1982 play, I am sorely tempted to write "Hold everything" and be done with it.

Craviotto is an award-winning television writer, but this preposterous concoction is so synthetic and phony that it makes "Three's Company" look like Molière. The setup—which is all there is and which we never for an instant believe—is that two 20-something single female roommates, one just dumped by her married lover and the other just fired for refusing to put out for the boss, decide to take their revenge by raping a man.

One can imagine a pitch-black comedy occupying Durang territory, but Craviotto writes with deadly realism laced with stale sitcom rhythms. Worse still, it takes Craviotto 55 minutes of tedious girl talk before the title character appears and any sort of dramatic action begins. There is an arbitrary first-act break 20 minutes later that would undoubtedly drive Aristotle to drink, after which we return for a breathtakingly unpersuasive 50 minutes more.

It's hard to fathom what drew director and co-producer Joan Kane to the material, especially as the play trivializes a very real and serious problem that women face. There's not a trace of subtlety to be found in her blaring direction, and though she's updated the time to the present—cell phones and such—Kane hasn't been smart enough to remove the deliveryman's backstory reference to being drafted, which the new chronology makes into an impossibility.

The three actors—Jillian Severin, Danielle Bechmann, and Richard Zeharia—attack with impressive commitment given the circumstances (and the tiny and cramped Bridge Theatre space), but there's really nothing they can do to ameliorate the awfulness. Bechmann has the most success in navigating the script's numerous implausibilities. Whenever she hits one, her extensive experience in standup comedy kicks in. Acting is abandoned, and it's one, two, three—punch line, and she's past it.

The evening's sole moment of believable emotion happened not too far into Act 1, when, entering upstage left through a doorway that's masked by sheer floor-length curtains hanging from a tension rod, Bechmann shrieked as they came clattering down upon her. For the rest of the act, I sat with an unobstructed view of an emergency exit sign glowing above, beckoning cruelly.

Presented by Ego Actus at the Bridge Theatre, 244 W. 54th St., 12th floor, NYC. Jan. 19–29. Tue.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 3 p.m. (Additional performance Sun., Jan. 22, 8 p.m.) (800) 838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com.