Like the characters it portrays, Blair Singer's The Most Damaging Wound acknowledges the need for men to bond with each other emotionally while viewing the whole process with a self-conscious and slightly embarrassed eye.
The setting is a soon-to-open restaurant on the Upper East Side, where 30-something proprietor GG (Michael Solomon) is hosting a boy's night out with his old college buddies. Kenny (Ken Matthews) is a new father who has come late, to say the least, to the drum-beating "men's movement" popularized by Robert Bly; Dicky (Chris Thorn), who rejoices in the nickname Dicky Dog, is the perpetual adolescent of the group; Bo (Bard Goodrich) is a gay, good-natured musician; and Alan (Michael Szeles) is a yuppie lobbyist whose fetching mistress Christine (Megan McQuillan) unexpectedly crashes the boy's club. Together they embark on a night of pizza, Jägermeister shots, and mutual recrimination, culminating in a ceremonial farewell to their lost youth.
Any play that features a gang of regular-guy types hugging and saying "I love you" is practically begging for trouble, but somehow this production navigates skillfully between the twin pitfalls of sappiness and easy mockery. The early scenes aren't terribly promising, with lots of drinkin', cussin', and whoopin' that corresponds more to popular clichés of maleness than to the genuine article. Happily, the play broadens and deepens as it goes along, and the cast, under Mark Armstrong's vigorous direction, shows real vitality and comic flair. Dicky Dog is easily the showiest part, and Thorn's combination of overbearing swagger and hangdog vulnerability suggests a taller, more macho Nathan Lane. Still, this is very much an ensemble piece, with Singer's motley assemblage of characters revealing an underlying cohesion. We have no trouble believing that despite the disparate paths they've taken, these are real friends with a long and complicated history.
Presented by the Production Company
at Manhattan Theatre Source, 177 MacDougal St., NYC.
Nov. 7-29. Wed.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 and 8 p.m.
(212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.productioncompany.org.