Dark side of the little black book

“What I’ve done is start to travel around a bit, here and there, and stop in on a few old girlfriends. Say ‘hi,’ that kind of thing. Before I get hitched.”

These words are meant to sound innocuous, but they’re spoken by a double-talking charmer who makes serial monogamy seem a close cousin to serial killing.

Of course, the imagination behind the play that contains this lout belongs to none other than that grand master of masculine depravity, Neil LaBute, a writer (“The Shape of Things,” “Fat Pig”) and a filmmaker (“In the Company of Men”) who has found bottomless inspiration in the spectacle of men behaving badly. “Some Girl(s),” which opened Wednesday at the Geffen Playhouse in a spot-on production directed by the playwright himself, continues his moral dissection of the unfair sex.

Guy, played by Mark Feuerstein with stubbly faced man-boy disingenuousness, is a kind of Everyman of romantic narcissism. On the verge of marriage, he has decided to reunite, one by one, with the women he has abruptly walked out on. The journey, mapped on a spreadsheet, requires him to crisscross the nation, jetting from hotel to hotel in Seattle, Chicago, Boston and, ultimately, Los Angeles, where the real motivation for his contrition tour is uncovered.

Guy, a 33-year-old Brooklyn-based writer who has just had a story published in the New Yorker, tries to pass his intentions off as natural, even healthy. He says he merely wants to “get caught up to date” with his old flames and -- ah, shucks! -- make sure there’s “no harm, no foul.”

But underneath his thin veneer of casual normality is a burning need to rub salt in still-open wounds. He’s not content to be a creep from the past; he needs to be a creep for eternity.

First stop is Seattle, to visit Sam (Paula Cale Lisbe, bearing authentic emotional scars), the high school sweetheart he dumped just before the prom. After establishing how well everything has turned out for him, Guy tells Sam why, after taking her virginity and building up her happily-ever-after hopes, he mysteriously jumped ship.

“You were a girl that I could sort of look at, maybe . . . and see her whole future,” he says. “And I think, if I can say this, history has proved me right,” he adds over her interjections of roiling astonishment.

Next up is Tyler (Justina Machado, in marvelously piquant form), a fun-loving hottie who wouldn’t mind messing around with Guy for old time’s sake. Downing minis from his mini bar and seductively blowing smoke into his mouth, she seems as conscience-free as he is, and as self-engrossed in her own pleasures. But never underestimate Guy’s ability to land an insidious knockout punch. Yes, they had torrid fun, but in truth, his mind was on someone else during their entire affair.

Victim, I mean ex, No. 3, is Lindsay (Rosalind Chao, simmering with defensive fury), an attractive and older gender studies professor he ditched after her academic husband (his boss and mentor) found out they were having sex. Goodbyes are not Guy’s forte, but he has a penchant for vanishing in a plume of smoke, cruelly leaving a mess of unanswered questions. He’s like an amorous Iago, who retreats into silence to keep everyone permanently wondering about the content of his dark heart. And not even a specialist in patriarchal perversity like Lindsay can figure out how to hurt him.

Finally, Guy hooks up with Bobbi (an attractively vindictive Jaime Ray Newman), yet another woman he showered with the word “always.” Tempted by her sexy wariness, he confesses that he’s still haunted by their breakup and that his 22-year-old fiancee reminds him of her. Like most manipulative Lotharios, he likes to imply a love he’s constitutionally incapable of. It’s a tactic that allows others to connect the dots of their own fantasy. He tortures women with a mirage of reciprocal happiness.

No point in spoiling the carefully implanted surprise, but as often is the case with LaBute, artists, particularly the careerists among them, are as morally deficient as any of his testosterone-deranged head cases. And Guy, who has written a work titled “The Calculus of Desire,” combines the self-seeking desperation of a budding author with the competitive craziness of an emotionally stunted jock.

The title, a tweaked version of an album by the Rolling Stones, whose music sounds between scenes, reflects Guy’s inability to take in the reality of another person. He’s under the impression that the world is his own TV show, and he’s the only the star that counts.

The repetitive aspect of this psychology is one of the built-in frustrations of “Some Girl(s),” which provides four squirm-inducing scenes detailing Guy’s modus operandi. LaBute enjoys getting under our skin. He’d rather bash our faces in hideous possibilities than comfort us with phony uplift.

But there’s a polemical quality to his cold candor. Contrivances often intervene in his plays to prove that his villains -- largely though not exclusively male -- are even worse than we feared.

Fortunately, the twist ending here works on the side of plausibility. Guy doesn’t always add up. Not that scoundrels like him aren’t commonplace, but they don’t tend to organize frequent-flier-mile itineraries for their pathologies. What we come to learn about him helps to substantiate his behavior.

Feuerstein, taking on the role that David Schwimmer originated in London and Eric McCormack performed off-Broadway, is like a puppy whose nips seem cute until you notice your hand is covered in blood. It’s a tough role -- a character who’s simultaneously enacting a ruse and revealing his true self -- and Feuerstein is on the road to figuring out the balance.

LaBute’s production derives strength from its smoothness. Especially nice is the way stagehands, dressed as housekeeping staff, transform Sybil Wickersheimer’s convincing hotel-room sets.

More impressive still are the feisty performances LaBute elicits from the four women in his cast. They may be interchangeable to Guy, but each actress establishes for her character an unmistakable sense of injured individuality.

--

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com

--

‘Some Girl(s)’

Where: Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Fridays, 3:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays

Ends: March 9

Price: $35 to $74

Contact: (310) 208-5454; www.geffenplayhouse.com

Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes