STAGE REVIEW : Taking a Swing at Greed

First we had “Search and Destroy.” Now we get “Pick Up Ax.” Somewhere in between there was “Speed-the-Plow.”

What do these plays have in common? All were done this year at South Coast Repertory. More significant, all hack away at the ruthless greed and self-gratification of the ‘80s. In “Search and Destroy” and “Speed-the-Plow” it was Hollywood greed. In Anthony Clarvoe’s “Pick Up Ax,” which opened Saturday, it’s Silicon Valley greed. But the bad taste in the mouth is the same bad taste. And the laughter has the same hollow ring, now that the party’s over and the chill of a gray dawn is upon us.

“Pick Up Ax” is a less mature work than its predecessors and the production at South Coast’s Second Stage, much like the “Speed-the-Plow” that went before it, is not entirely comfortable delivering the hip ‘80s jargon and hipper computer talk--at least not in the first act. It picks up in the second, where the play defines itself better and the actors grow more easy in the parts they play. But Clarvoe’s voice is a new and inviting one, even if he is not always well served here by director David Esbjornson.

You need more grit than Esbjornson finds to tell the story of Keith Rienzi (Jonathan Gries), a street kid and computer genius, and his partner Brian Weiss (Steve Levitt), whose main occupation is to keep Keith coming up with new ideas. But this is the Silicon Valley in the early ‘80s, a brutally competitive place for small operators, and Keith has been coming up dry.

1This leaves the figurative door wide open for Mick Palomar (Michael McKenzie), a huckster on the run from heavy industry, to walk in with all of the charm of the wolf who called on Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma.

We won’t spoil the ending by revealing it, but “Pick Up Ax” can stand tall next to such other con-artist plays as the virulent “Other People’s Money” and sardonic “Palladium Is Moving”--minor masterpieces that artfully dissect the conniving triumphs of a business world wholly dedicated to the business of carving itself up. But the pressurized high-tech triangulation Clarvoe presents in his Silicon Valley comedy, where “nothing seems older than modernity” because everything is dated the moment it’s invented, is at once more fascinating and more difficult to introduce to a lay audience.

In this regard Esbjornson and his actors haven’t quite figured out how to hit the rhythm of this play right from the start--the way these guys talk, move, connect and program the computer to play music that second-guesses their moods. Levitt and Gries strike the right notes but they don’t really start playing their song until after the intermission.

McKenzie’s Mick is more comfortable much quicker as he gingerly invades Gries’ and Levitt’s space. Nervy, edgy, manicured and compelling, he reeks of bad news. But we pick up too slowly on Levitt’s Brian as a weak, talentless man doomed to extinction in this pressure-cooker, and even more slowly on Gries’ loopy, neo-simian, semi-abstracted Keith. This is not just the benign idiot-savant the playwright calls him, but something of a larger, perhaps evil genius who can do more than connect unlikely numbers or make weird associations pay off--all meanings intended.

John Iacovelli has supplied a sleek back-to-basics revolving set with only a computer, a desk and a projected window. Appropriately, the computer is the star (thanks to software engineer Joel Lagerquist), the atmosphere is stiflingly airless and Brian Gale’s clever lighting schemes mess around with our minds. The additional layering of having Brian, Keith and Mick named after the well-known members of the Rolling Stones is an inside joke that adds little flavor, but certifies Clarvoe’s sense of humor.

Whether the production is failing the writer or the writer failing the actors in the early part is difficult to call. One rather suspects the former to be more likely, but it wouldn’t hurt for all heads to get together one more time and take another hard look at Act I. There is no question that it doesn’t quite fly, just as there is no question that Clarvoe is on to something. One day we may know more precisely what.

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