Love hurts, as the song goes, and in Bekah Brunstetter's play I Used to Write on Walls, women suffer vividly, and at times humorously, for love. This entertaining would-be feminist fable, however, is less convincing than cute.
The women pine for Trevor, a 24-year-old stoned surfer with delusions of religious grandeur, humorously played by Jeff Berg, who injects earnest simplicity into lines like "I love church. It's so rad." Trevor is about to commit an act of graffiti when intercepted by Diane (Maggie Hamilton), a lonely cop blessed with zingy self-awareness. Watching him, she remembers, "I used to write on walls." Trevor's goofy innocence also works like divine poison on Joanne (Darcie Champagne), a desperately needy makeup artist, and on Georgia (Levita Shaurice), an angry spoken-word poet who is carrying Trevor's baby. 11-year-old Anna (Chelsey Shannon, mugging painfully), who can't wait to get her period, and Anna's mother (Rachel Dorfman), who envies her daughter's beautiful face, begin and end the story but don't really hold it together. A 47-year-old woman named Mona (Ellen David) can't wait to get her hands on Trevor too. Diana Basmajian and Isaac Byrne's co-direction brings out the comedy but not the shape of Brunstetter's play.
At its best, Brunstetter's writing has real promise. Diane's opening monologue, consisting of an awkward voicemail message that ends "thanks for the sex," is an audition piece waiting to happen. Diane's mother (Mary Round) connects to her daughter's sudden passion by revealing her own unfulfilled fantasy to love a musician and "sit in a corner and watch him and think, I make love to that person. That body is mine." Unfortunately, the play doesn't live up to insights like this. Trevor isn't a destructive boy-man; he's just a tool, and the women who cry and die for him are victimizing themselves. Brunstetter's contrivances keep her play clever but interfere with the compelling portrayal of what women want that it clearly yearns to be.
Presented by Working Man's Clothes Productions
at the Gene Frankel Theatre Underground, 24 Bond St., NYC.
Oct. 11-27. Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.
(212) 868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.