Life During Wartime

Keith Reddin's play about a burglar-alarm salesman who falls in love with a customer is not very good except for a handful of scenes. In one, the character John Calvin walks on wearing a toque and a fur-fringed robe to criticize what he sees in a Chinese restaurant, where a crew of salespeople makes profanity-peppered conversation. Calvin says, "Why do so many modern writers resort to gutter talk as an easy way out?" Hah! The restaurant, the salesmen, and the profanity are a clear reference to Mamet and Glengarry Glen Ross. Unfortunately, this effect is only so funny, and after a while you wish Calvin would stop interrupting. Jonathan Gonzalez plays him well, but when the joke gets old you have to rely on Patrick Jones as Howard the sullen teenager (and later as Richie the barfly) for onstage interest. Jones does nervy, well-controlled work as Howard, who has to watch his mother have an affair with some slick-suited stranger full of information about burglar alarms; in a Marilyn Manson T-shirt, looking lazy, Howard gives a long, breathless, mom-befuddling speech about an unlikely car accident. It's perfectly paced and very funny. Jones is young but full of talent; he bears watching -- unlike most of Keith Reddin.