‘Tough!’ Talk Amid Romantic Chaos

George F. Walker’s one-act “Tough!” at the Coast Playhouse is a bitter torrent of tough-minded talk among three young adults who are quickly learning that being grown-up isn’t what it was cracked up to be.

Tina (Nina-Marie Gardner) confronts her boyfriend Bobby (John Gatins) in a park with the bulletin that he’s been seen playing around, but what’s really on her mind is that she’s pregnant. Her chum Jill (Sydney Bennett) brings everything out into the open and proceeds to appoint herself prosecuting attorney as well as Tina’s bodyguard, nailing hapless Bobby’s hide to the wall.

Although the setup resembles the kind of relationships that are grilled daily on lowbrow talk shows, Walker allows his characters to speak without commercial interruptions or whoops from the audience, and eventually we hack through the verbiage and share some sympathy with all of them. It isn’t deep, but it’s involving enough that we miss the fact that there isn’t a second act. Robert Lee King’s staging, in front of Katherine Ferwerda’s deceptively placid park backdrop, cuts to the quick.

A curtain raiser, “The Beautiful Love,” presents Ron Garcia in a solo turn as a man whose troubled romantic obsession is too complicated to be treated this briefly. Director Michael Goorjian co-wrote the monologue with Garcia.

* “Tough!,” Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m. $12.50. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.