Implausible Premise Colors Dramatics of ‘The 24th Day’

“The 24th Day,” which had its world premiere Saturday night at the Coronet Theatre, offers two heartthrob-actors who aren’t doctors but who play them on TV. Noah Wyle (Dr. Carter on “ER”) is Dan, an arrogant but charming gay man who comes home with a grungy-looking pick-up named Tom (Peter Berg, Dr. Kronke on “Chicago Hope”). In his first full-length play, Anthony Piccirillo invents a situation to keep these two men closeted together in a small New York apartment for 48 hours.

Though the situation is preposterous, it brims with dramatic possibilities. But “The 24th Day” fizzles out of possibility halfway through its short (and intermissionless) life.

In the first, taut and excellent scene, the men verbally circle one another on the way to bed in Tom’s comfortably shabby upper West Side digs (authentically designed by Edward E. Haynes Jr.). The smooth-talking Dan says anything he needs to in order to get the skittish Tom between the sheets. Along the way it becomes clear that something else is going on beneath the trivia games, the assurances (from Dan) and the shy, probing questions (from Tom). As the scene builds to its menacing conclusion, the first act shows a real playwright at work, expertly maneuvering, hiding information, disclosing it, making you think about sentences you thought you already understood in a completely different way.

The play sustains its tension for only a little while (four scenes, to be exact) after a hostage situation begins. Tom has actually lured Dan to his apartment because he believes that Dan infected him with the AIDS virus six years ago in a one-night-only sexual encounter. He plans to get even, after he has sent out Dan’s blood to be tested so he can be sure that Dan was the one. The men have to wait 48 hours for the blood test results, and along the way, as you begin to ponder all the reasons why this doesn’t make perfect sense, you might feel as if you are waiting that long too.

In the better-written role of Dan, Wyle is quite good--cunning and scared, veering between confidence that his heretofore charmed life will protect him and the icy fear that his luck has just run out. His changing feelings toward his captor as he tries to figure Tom out and relax him are complex and interesting to follow. As the sullen Tom, Berg offers less emotional complexity. Spilling out his secrets little by little to his personable hostage, Tom remains unrelentingly lumpen.

The tug and pull between the characters grows aimless in the play’s latter half, even as they get into what should be percolating issues about personal responsibility. Also, the playwright has planted one too many incredible secrets in Tom’s motivation. In doing so, Piccirillo alienates the audience from this increasingly melodramatic plot’s outcome, which, when it arrives, is soft and anticlimactic.

“The 24th Day” is more a drama of psychological duress than it is an AIDS play. Perhaps there is no longer even such a thing as an AIDS play, urgently explaining the disease to a supposedly uncomprehending public. Instead, as in “The 24th Day,” AIDS is now a device that can be used for suspense or as an opening for a debate about personal responsibility in the ‘90s.

Director Paul Lazarus, who does such fine work in the first five scenes, allows the actors to lose their momentum in that debate. What should be an intricate moral issue becomes, “I don’t owe you anything” (Dan) vs. “No one will stand up and say, ‘It’s me. I did it’ ” (Tom). The play’s final image is a nicely redemptive one (beautifully lit by Anne Militello) but it is too little, too late for “The 24th Day.”

* “The 24th Day,” Coronet Theatre, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 and 7 p.m. Ends April 14. $32-$37.50. (310) 657-7377. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Noah Wyle: Dan

Peter Berg: Tom

Presented by Seth Flicker and Michael Filerman in association with Grossbart/Barnett Productions. By Anthony Piccirillo. Directed by Paul Lazarus. Sets by Edward E. Haynes Jr. Lighting Anne Militello. Costumes Kathleen Detoro. Sound Joe Romano. Fight direction Randy Kovitz. Production stage manager Mary Michele Miner.