Completeness

Why, hello again. How incredibly erratic my theatergoing has gotten lately. I didn't see anything and then I saw everything. I went from nothing to write about to way behind, so let's dive in with the first of five shows I saw in the past six days: Itamar Moses' Completeness at Playwrights Horizons. You know how some things can be too clever for their own good? This is like that. But it works. Mostly. In spite of itself. Let's get more specific.

Boy are you lucky this blog isn't in real time because I just went on a crazy hunt for my Playbill. Never found it. So let's just say I might be guessing at some character names here. The show opens with Elliot and Molly (confirmed names!) meeting in a computer lab on an unnamed college campus. He's a computer programmer. She's a biology grad student studying the reactions of different proteins in yeast. Or different proteins ON yeast? It's something about proteins and yeast. How to summarize this as quickly as possible while also not revealing how much of the science-y discussions I didn't understand? So...to map the possible chemical reactions of proteins, you need to be able to isolate the independent reactions of properties and find a way to take into consideration every other stimuli that may be itself causing the reaction. Computers can help by processing algorithms that will limit the potential outcomes and produce incredibly specific answers. But to be able to process every single outcome of something, you need a big fat algorithm that technology as we know it wouldn't be able to solve within our lifetimes.

In other words, all things are at the cusp of being knowable, but the incredible number of variations that could potentially occur might as well be infinite as far as the human brain is able to comprehend them. Not everything is possible, but it might as well be. Surround this discussion with a love story that takes these principles into account and...voila: Completeness.

So yeah, it's an incredibly complicated metaphor for romantic interaction, and why we can't know whether or not things will ever work out. And that metaphor is perhaps too conveniently grafted onto a play about two nerd geniuses falling in love just as they're each falling out of love with two other people (the other two cast members, Meredith Forlenza and Brian Avers as characters I can't name from memory). The dialogue is too self-consciously clever, and the themes are passed along in a less than subtle way, but you know what? I really dug it.

Here's why: the play is nothing if not ambitious. From the author's willingness to tackle big, complicated concepts to his breaking of formal convention in the second act (in a hideous bit that should be cut except that it means so well), he may not always succeed, but that it is as accomplished as it is as often as it is...it's just really promising. It's also crazy funny at times, and it manages a pitch-perfect demonstration of the mating rituals of the privileged and over-educated. Also, the cast is fantastic. Karl Miller is adorable as Elliot, a self-involved yet oddly romantic doofus with charm to spare. Aubrey Dollar as bio grad student Molly is perfection. She's a self-loathing narcissist, drowning in guilt that she can't stop being fascinated by. She may hate her life, but she definitely doesn't find anything else more interesting. Dollar is also a natural comedian, provoking the hardest laughter without ever seeming to try.

This is one of those shows where you feel like in lesser hands, you'd be chewing your own hand off hoping the experience would just end. But somehow a cast was assembled that could be witty and believable and effortless even while spouting off about complicated algebraic and biological nonsense. While the show may be ham-handed in its delivery, it also shows a beautiful sense of balance between comedy and drama with the characters balanced precariously on the edge of being hideously irritating without ever going over.

Completely is a deeply imperfect, lovingly executed, totally enjoyable show.