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The Way We Get By
By David Schultz The initial moments of this new play holds some promise. A man stumbles out of a bedroom and fumbles around in the dim light, searching for a drink. He is awkward, out of his element, not in his own apartment, and clearly embarrassed by what has transpired in the other room. The classic set-up…. a one nightstand and its repercussions hang overhead like a heavy fog. Doug (Thomas Sadoski) looks like he has thoughts on skipping out before his bedmate awakens. Suddenly his paramour Beth (Amanda Seyfried) comes out of the bedroom, bleary eyed, extremely sexy, and wearing nothing but a Star Wars t-shirt borrowed from Doug. Obviously something has happened in that room a few hours ago…. sex yes…but something more…. something deeply disturbing, and life changing. What that might be and why these two people are so in thrall with each other and in agony at the same time forms the crux of the play. Mr. LaBute doles out little crumbs of information bit by bit during this intermissionless evening. It comes to light that these two attractive 30 something’s have known each other since they were teens, but never made it to first base. Meeting again at a wedding reception the night before, with more than a few drinks between them, they somehow ended up at Beth’s apartment, that is owned by an anal retentive roommate, and finally went full throttle and consummated their long desired passion. The roommate is never seen but is loathed by Beth because she is a controlling compulsive dictator. Much of the first portion of the play swirls around the half spoken dialogue, each character starts to speak, then mentally corrects themselves, then chokes out a few more words and stops themselves.
You sense that LaBute is playing and manipulating the audience with what is being withheld. The two lovers onstage sure know much more than we do at this point. The suppression of information, leads to something dark and revelatory…. one would think. The back and forth trite chattering reaches a feverish pitch. Then finally, thirty minutes later the elephant in the room rears its head. The revelation of why these two have such an intimate and magnetic pull is dropped on us. (No Spoiler Alert Here). What a disappointment. After all that has transpired this trite and ho-hum dénouement coagulates into mush. For the next forty minutes we are now hearing the fallout of what they already knew, as they try to work out a consideration of where they can and will go from this moment on. The conversation circles back and forth with each character making their case for, against, possibly, absolutely not, well maybe…. to carry this relationship to the next stage. Maddeningly the two leads are quite good and have an easy sexy chemistry between them. The perfectly calibrated verbal pyrotechnics are carried off with aplomb. Maddeningly, yes…. because they are incased, and trapped in a sitcom-like artificial bubble of a play. The apartment setting of this bubble is nice…. perfectly rendered in an IKEA-like décor mode by designer Neil Patel. The lighting is mostly bright with not much variation. Though the rear windows are disconcertingly hazy with various shades of light, as to what exact time it may be. Director Leigh Silverman moves these two actors around quite a bit. At times they seem to be staged as if they were animals in a zoo, circling, drawing near, backing way off into the corners, then back again. There is not much these actors can do to salvage this play. The anticlimactic reveal midway through has nowhere to go but down. The construct is nothing but flimsy to begin with, and sadly this misfire collapses like a tower of playing cards. This masochistic evening is like a bad date. The Way We Get By 
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