‘Veins’ Makes Sherman’s Blood Boil

“Basically, this is my revenge against New Jersey--all of the things it did to me when I was growing up,” mused playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman, whose dark comedy “Veins and Thumbtacks” premieres Thursday at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

“It’s not intense hatred,” allowed the playwright, 24, a native of Livingston, N.J., and graduate of Bennington College. “Nothing in New Jersey is that intense. But it’s like a certain type of person seems to breed there: real closed-minded, real shallow. I never saw any of the things that supposedly made America great--just people wanting to gossip, cut everyone down to their level. And no one seemed to be doing anything that fulfilled them, or might in the future.”

The play focuses on 10 years (ages 18-28) in the life of fictional Jerseyite Jimmy Bonaparte. “He wants to be heard, he wants to be loved, he wants to be a lot of things,” said Sherman. “He starts as a stand-up comic on a cable-access TV show; he also works in a supermarket putting price stickers on cans. At the same time, he’s taking care of his filthy-mouthed, wheelchair-bound grandmother and the high school girl he impregnates, marries and divorces.”

Sherman, who’s contentedly estranged from his home state (“I’ll go back there and visit, but that’s it”), describes Jimmy’s plight as “being stuck in New Jersey’s version of the American Dream. He has the energy, but not the foundation,” explained the writer, whose “Women and Wallace” ran at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in 1990 and was taped for PBS’ “American Playhouse” series. “He doesn’t know the dream he’s bought into isn’t going to pay him back.”

“Veins” was originally presented as a NewWorks staged reading during LATC’s 1990 Festival of Premieres. David Saint reprises his duties here, directing Fisher Stevens (as Jimmy), Elizabeth Berridge, Bruce MacVittie, Beatrice Manley, William Marquez, Mercedes McNab and Pamela Segall.