Players Hit Home in Ambiguous ‘Mets’

Good actors give their all in the service of a thankless play in Road Theatre Company’s “New York Mets.” In this confused comedy, playwright TJ Edwards attempts to tackle issues of semantics, sexual confusion and the dehumanization of urban life. Under the thoughtful direction of Scott Smith, the cast acts rings around its material, but ultimately cannot tie up the loose ends of this empty exercise in ambiguity.

The action is set in 1986, in a small typewriter repair and manuscript preparation shop on New York’s Lower East Side, a locale precisely evoked by Terry J. Evans and J.F. Smith Jr.’s detailed set. Shop owner Phil (Michael Dempsey) is strangely determined to marry his typist-editor Rosie (a winning Tamara Zook), a published poet who may be a lesbian--or so claims Ernie (a heroically histrionic Christopher Faville), Phil’s struggling writer pal. As we learn, Ernie has his own romantic designs on Phil.

As for Phil, he’s so terrified by his own repressed homosexuality that he vacillates wildly between teddy bear cuteness and creepy rage. Phil remains bizarrely inaccessible despite Dempsey’s valiant efforts to humanize him. But unintentional inaccessibility is a problem throughout Edwards’ directionless piece. We get little hint of the play’s sexual undercurrents--or the playwright’s intentions--until far along in the action, when Edwards bludgeons us over the head with them before delivering the coup de grace of a falsely emotional ending.

*

* “New York Mets,” Road Theatre Company at the Lankershim Arts Center, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 8. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours.