A Gut-Wrenching Near Miss

Prolific young playwright Adam Rapp's new play, Red Light Winter, begins looking like an ordinary sort of story about prostitution mixed with dangerous love. While the latter holds true, the play is far from an ordinary manifestation of a commonplace story line.

In the first act, best friends Matt (Christopher Denham) and Davis (Gary Wilmes) are staying in a run-down hostel in Amsterdam's infamous Red Light District. As they describe it, they find themselves in what seems like a "slightly refracted parallel reality." Red lights bleed in through the windows as Matt sits alone in the room working on a play. Denham disappears into his character, with a perfectly nuanced performance of the shy, nerdy "Olympic gold medalist for emerging playwrights." Matt's timid, nervous demeanor and fast speech are contrasted by Wilmes' equally believable performance as the crass, frat boy Davis, who takes pleasure in borderline-insulting mockery of his friend. Polar opposites attract in this case-the two, while diametrically opposed, are like brothers. This point is also well proven through the actors' performances.

Davis returns from a night out with a beautiful French prostitute named Christina (Lisa Joyce), whom he has planned to introduce to Matt. It's clear that Christina and Davis have an animalistic sexual connection, while Christina's connection with Matt is far more real and intellectual. She is interested in the play he is writing and seems to open him up, though he suspects her interest is "some sort of pity-the-nerd exercise"-an obligation to sleep with him.

Christina may appear at first glance like a cliched sympathetic, vaguely kind prostitute, until her secrets unravel. Joyce pulls away one layer at a time as her character reveals both truths and untruths. She is not alone in having much hidden, forming an awkward love triangle with two men who also hide their own secrets behind facades. Things continue to unravel a year later on one coincidence-plagued evening in Matt's cramped East Village apartment.

The play's opening-a haunting scene of attempted suicide-immediately sets the play up to not simply be a story of a man falling in love with a whore, but rather an exploration of inner, personal stigmas and personal perception of experience. Rapp bases the play on a factual trip of his own, and pulls from his own realities to explore deeply painful ideas about notions of unrequited love, about which Christina sings a song she's written. During the song, Davis gives a googly-eyed nod, barely understanding the meaning, while Matt finds it brilliantly reflective.

Rapp's writing is smooth and seamless, his dialogue without static, choppy moments. Even though he treats morbid subject matter, it is sprinkled with clever, well-balanced humor.

At its very simplest, the play is a fascinating exploration of personal perceptions of good and bad, and how we see the people around us. What they are versus what we would like them to be becomes something deeply rooted, cathartic and ultimately compelling, pushing the play through to its draining end.

The end is one of frustrating ambiguity-something of a cliffhanger, though one can probably make a fairly accurate guess as to what would happen should the story be continued. Although the ends if filled with gut-wrenching pain, the viewer feels as though the play sells itself short, as though it is incomplete ending as abruptly as it does. It seems on its way to hitting a nerve, but doesn't quite get there. It stops short of reaching the height it is heading toward. Overall, the play is less than brilliant, though highly moving and without formidable flaw. Although the ending fails in some way, it is still affecting enough.