Lead Performances Are ‘Almost Perfect’

“Almost Perfect” isn’t even close, but a breezy Santa Monica Playhouse staging by Chris DeCarlo offers some agreeable lead performances that make one appreciate the plight of women caught in the cross-fire of a confirmed schmuck’s quest for personal happiness.

On the plus side, that’s part of author Jerry Mayer’s point in this romantic comedy with Neil Simon qualities. His hero-narrator Buddy (Albie Selznick), an aspiring writer who’s compromised his “bliss” for a safe job and marriage, is an annoying and fundamentally dishonest philanderer only a Jewish mother could love.

To his credit, Selznick doesn’t soft-peddle Buddy’s unpleasant qualities--he’s unabashedly selfish, manipulative and untrustworthy. That becomes a problem, though, when the play asks us to believe Buddy can win the hearts of two attractive, intelligent women solely on the basis of his ability to make wisecracks.

The implausible Buddy groupies include his stiff, conservative wife, Jenny (Wendy Michaels), and Boots (Heidi Anderson), a well-heeled, cultured media account rep who should know better but unaccountably doesn’t. Both performers tread a fine line in maintaining their characters’ integrity despite being written more as fantasy projections of Home and Hearth, and Seductress, respectively. Bill Ackerman, Donald Bishop and Susan Davis appear as Buddy’s kibitzing family.

In chronicling Buddy’s exploits, Mayer often trades probability for glib one-liners. Some developing climaxes (including the cliffhanger ending Act 1) are deflated with clumsy exposition, though the final sequence does offer some authentic if predictable emotional insight. But regardless of whether the “world’s greatest husband-in-training” may or may not have salvaged a relationship, what seems to matter most in the L.A.-style happy ending is that he’s written a good screenplay. --P.B.

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* “Almost Perfect,” Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 4th St., Santa Monica. Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 6:30 and 9:30 p.m.; Sundays, 6:30 p.m. Dark Monday-Jan. 6. Ends Feb. 27. $18-20. (310) 394-9779, Ext. 1. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.