"It's not enough to show the sex and violence," contends art dealer Will Royal (Robert Foster). "People have to feel it." The video installation in his Chelsea gallery depicts a very realistic rape of a teenage girl. The exploration of this incendiary work and its mysterious creator and the efforts by Royal's video editor Manny (Daniel McCoy) to protect a revolutionary data-reporting process he invents make up the two tracks of James Christy Jr.'s slightly murky but nonetheless rewarding play.
The playwright's theme of the tenuous nature of trust is laced through the connected group of characters. Manny's ex from eight years ago, Liz (Gia McGinley), is the best friend of Will's wife, Anne (Marisa O'Brien), though Liz hardly proves this by having a secretive affair with Will. A charming, almost pathological liar named Hoover (Tito Ortiz) threatens Will's arrangement and Manny's intellectual property with a brusque, feel-good, take-no-prisoners attitude. Christy adds a further layer by having the major characters deliver monologues as adolescents, revealing more of their makeup.
Foster and Ortiz have a field day here as the work's most slickly reprehensible characters. The former is wonderfully sly as he defends the social importance of depicting rape imagery to his wife and friends yet unnervingly creepy as he reveals to Manny what little respect he has had for his devoted co-worker. Ortiz hits a high note of righteous cheerfulness and Svengali-like manipulation as he blithely carves his way through the characters toward his own success.
Christy has a lot on his mind with this play, and, although he does not develop his female characters as fully as he might, there is a play here very much worth refining. The pivotal role of Liz is far too opaque to work effectively, and McGinley's petulance gives us and the other characters little reason fall for her. Director Lindsay Allbaugh shows an impressive command of the stage with the numerous scene changes, abetted by swinging panels and many fine music cues. It is a shame he does not have a uniformly strong cast to back up this engaging though diffuse tale of treachery and self-serving behavior.