STAGE REVIEWS : On the Road to Oblivion in ‘Beach Play’

Losers are a hot subject for today’s playwrights, but few of them juggle the dangerous fires playwright David Darmstaedter takes on in “Beach Play,” the final entry in the Tuesday series of “Triskaideka.”

There is absolutely nothing redeemable about Phil and Arnie. They don’t even have enough rope left to tie a knot in.

Phil lifts weights in his brother’s beachfront pad, thinks about thieving and suicide, and waits.

Arnie has a key to the pad, but not to life. A failed porno actor whose latest girlfriend gave him the boot, he’s a busboy who couldn’t even make it as a waiter.

That they find a twisted temporary salvation in each other is only another step toward oblivion, but the trip they take getting there is utter magic under the co-direction of Timothy McNeil and T. Baker Rowell. The dialogue is rich in insight and crackles with wit, providing a seaside fun house for the impeccable virtuoso performances of Alan Gelfant as Phil and Mark Ruffalo as Arnie.

Barbara Lindsay’s “Grunions,” directed by Milton Justice, is a tender, loving glance at a speed-bump in a marriage, symbolized by the hope of seeing the tiny fish flop onto the beach. Sanford Clark and Elizabeth Reilly are charming as the couple.

The evening’s two opening plays are a disappointment.

David Bottrell’s “The Monkey Business” is a one-joke piece about a women’s club dedicated to the survival of a zoo’s primate house, and Michael Hacker’s “Spoil” is about obsession, but is mostly obsessed with its own shape and cleverness.