Boy Gets Girl, the latest from up-and-coming playwright Rebecca Gilman, represents a 2-for-2 in terms of promise unfulfilled for this new voice in the theater. Critics have been singing her praises ever since the debut of her racially-charged drama, Spinning into Butter, at Lincoln Center last year, citing her willingness to hit on hot-button issues and bring forth topics relevant to modern society but are rarely explored in theater. Few, however, seems to mind that she starts with potentially explosive premises that completely deflate before your very eyes. In the case of Spinning and this new production, Gilman creates a taut, penetrating first act rife with possibility and the ability to really push boundaries. Then she drops the ball, possibly picking up on the fact that some audience members (namely the aging subscribers that attend her shows) might not want to go there, which will assure their approval but leave theatergoers with a more adventurous spirit in the dust. It's a real shame, because Boy Gets Girl, for about an hour, hypnotizes in its attention to detail. Theresa Bedell (Mary Beth Fisher) is a magazine journalist who agrees to meet a blind date named Tony (Ian Lithgow, John's son) at a neighborhood bistro. The standard tension of this chance encounter has a scary exactitude, and Fisher and Lithgow portray just the right blend of trepidation and discomfort. The date goes reasonable well, and despite her better judgment, she agrees to go on a second date with him. Theresa represents the modern working woman, but with a twist. She is edgy and independent but always thinking of her needs as a woman, and this is the shrewdest decision on the part of playwright Gilman. In a way, Theresa is disagreeable, which makes what is to follow that much more interesting. What does follow is a date with Tony that goes less smoothly than their previous one, and her blunt assertion to him that they won't work out. Lithgow, in a rather transforming piece of facial acting, makes Tony's rejection deeply felt without drawing too much attention to it. Fisher's motivations are perfectly in sync, and despite the reservations we have toward her, it seems sound and effective. It turns out Tony is a potentially dangerous stalker, and Theresa has become his new victim. After popping up at her office, sending her flowers and re wooing her to no effect, Theresa makes it clear she is through with him. In retaliation, he begins to phone her incessantly, making violent threats and eventually, following her on her daily routine. And then the play completely fizzles. At the start of Act Two, Theresa has already consulted a hard-nosed detective (Ora Jones) and her co-workers/confidantes (Matt DeCaro and David Adkins), and all of the beguiling ambiguity surrounding Theresa's character dissipate to reveal a standard victim cliche. In a great detour in the first section, Theresa is assigned to interview Russ Meyer stand-in Les Kenkat (a drolly funny Howard Witt), and her disdain for his T&A schlock filmmaking is apparent, but Les, an old-world but oddly seasoned old bird, is on to her. He calls Theresa on her blind ambition, and in turn, she slowly learns to respect him. There is a fascinating set-up in this parallel to the doomed Tony-Theresa relationship, but when everything goes soggy in the second half, all of Gilman's engaging ideas pretty much go out the leading lady's second-story walk-up. As soon as the play starts involving Theresa's all-too-eager pals at work in her trapped new existence (don't worry, they don't become villains or anything, Gilman doesn't let things go that badly) and a silly development involving her airhead assistant (Shayna Ferm), the whole shebang goes bust. Fisher's performance remains skilled and believable, even though Theresa's curious nature evaporates, and all the intriguing nuances offered up by Gilman about her fade from view. For a play about deeply sociopathic behavior and the consequences of not being able to escape a very threatening situation, the atmosphere becomes vaguely unthreatening, fairly routine and a tad moralistic. You can't say Rebecca Gilman didn't try, but you can argue that she didn't quite have the courage to make Boy Gets Girl the lingering conversation piece it should have become.
