The terse, unappealing title Jeffrey Sweet has chosen for his unsettling comedy-drama about mismatched young lovers is appropriately descriptive, both literally and symbolically. The play's resolution stems from a verbal duel in which one character's bold show of confidence causes another to capitulate. Symbolically, the people in Bluff can be seen as teetering on the edge of a precipice. And Gene (Tad Chitwood), the dental supply salesman and detested stepfather of prickly, mixed-up Emily (Carla Witt), is certainly bluff in manner and speech. Chitwood's larger-than-life portrayal of a role that could be boringly stereotypical is the best thing about The Necessary Theater's bare-bones production. Despite his flaws and weaknesses Gene becomes, in Chitwood's hands, a somewhat sympathetic figure, with qualities more admirable than those displayed by Sweet's other characters. These include, apart from highly strung Emily with her seething rage against the cards life has dealt her, Emily's laconic live-in lawyer boyfriend Neal (Chris Parente) and her alcoholic mother, Georgia (Laurene Scalf), who married Gene after the death of Emily's father in a highway accident.
Neither Emily nor Georgia has recovered from the drastic turn their lives took after that. As Gene says of Emily, advising Neal not to marry her, "She's very angry, always has been. Her father was stolen from her as a kid. She thinks of the perfect life she could have had." Emily and Neal meet on a New York street when they rush to aid the victim of a gay-bashing near Neal's West Village apartment, where Neal has taken home from a party a sexy, willing woman, Bonnie (Bridget Thomas, in an annoying Marilyn Monroe imitation) and is about to bed her. Emily soon after warns Neal that "I'm not a Bonnie" and that she doesn't do "recreational sex." Of her mother (she hasn't seen her for two years), Emily scornfully says, "Her primary food group is vodka." Old-fashioned Georgia "still lives in the Fifties" and does not approve of Emily and Neal's living together and "screwing without a license."
Author Sweet's chilly, self-involved characters are hardly the types one cares about. For the most part, they hardly care about each other. This distancing effect is increased by Sweet's ill advised idea to let certain actors step out of character and address the audience as themselves. Not only does this disturb the flow of the play, it also falls flat and does not amuse. That said, Carla Witt's edgy performance makes Emily thoroughly believable if not likeable, and Chris Parente as the buffeted Neal effectively conveys the puzzled fascination with Emily that seals her hold over him.
