‘Eastern Standard’: Attractively Shallow

Like the New York yuppie culture it portrays, Richard Greenberg’s 10-year-old “Eastern Standard” is largely superficial. But the cast at the Century City Playhouse is charming and good-looking enough to almost make you forgive the contrived nature of this romantic comedy.

The angst-ridden, all-too-successful architect Stephen (Mark Thompson of “Mark & Brian” radio fame) meets his gay artist friend Drew (Jack Hannibal) at an uptown restaurant to show him Phoebe (Kathleen Lambert), the woman he has been watching and following for three weeks. The object of Stephen’s affection, Phoebe, is meeting her gay brother, Peter (Joe Cappelletti), to disclose her breakup with a man at the center of a stockbroker scandal. Peter reveals he’s terminally ill.

Greenberg throws these people together in a cute-meet initiated by a foul-mouthed street person, May (Hannah Eckstein), who infiltrated this chic cafe. Soon the foursome are off to Stephen’s summer beach house in the Hamptons. Phoebe juggles love-loyalties by keeping her old boyfriend updated via telephone unbeknownst to good guy Stephen. Drew is in lustful pursuit of the doomed Peter. “Gritty reality” is imported when, in an act of largess, Stephen invites both the waitress Ellen (Jacleen Haber) and May to spend some time there.

Under the sunny direction of John Gidcomb, not one speck of gloom darkens even Peter. His predetermined death remains oddly abstract.

Like the architect in “The Fountainhead,” Stephen is concerned about the soulless nature of the corporate influence on his work. Greenberg does attempt some glossy social awareness, but actually this play is little more than an excuse for a few clever quips and slight romantic fare among the beautiful people.

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* “Eastern Standard,” Century City Playhouse, 10508 W. Pico Blvd., Century City. Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Dark this weekend. Ends Aug. 2. $15. (310) 226-7096. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.