Review: In Rough Trade, Gay Millennials Look Toward Middle Age and Shudder

If I have one piece of advice for young artists in New York, it's this: Marry rich…or at least couple with someone who has a good prospect of becoming rich. The cost of living in this town is too high, the time commitment of waiting tables too burdensome to really thrive as an artist without an alternative source of income. Two poor artists in love is like a relationship between two bottoms — doomed to failure.

One of the characters in Kev Berry's Rough Trade realizes this and is doing something about it. This somewhat workmanlike, often hilarious, uncomfortably relatable drama is now making its world premiere at the Tank, an appropriately off-off-Broadway venue for a story about two young gay artists at the make-or-break stage of their lives.

Bunting (Remy Germinario) is a painter (read: waiter) and Finch (Derek Christopher Murphy) is a sculptor (read: tour guide). They used to date, but now they're just roommates who blow their meager paychecks on boozy dinners at Arriba Arriba, followed by more drinks at Hardware. Much of this play reads like an atlas (social club) of Hell's Kitchen for the bicurious explorer.

Their fragile codependence is disrupted when Bunting meets a handsome graphic novelist (read: escort) at 9th Avenue Saloon who goes by the on-the-nose name Cock (Gabriel Neumann). As Bunting falls in love with Cock, Finch is aggressively pursued by Hawk (Max Kantor), an accountant for a pharmaceutical company (this is his real job). But is Finch ready to give up on the boho lifestyle and move in with an attractive sugar daddy who has a duplex in the West 50s?

Of course she is! And this is the major source of conflict in Rough Trade. Bunting sneers at Hawk's heteronormative culture, his thoroughly unwoke job, and his money. (Who exactly does he expect will buy his abstract paintings, should be become successful?) Years of resentment and unrequited desire seem to have amassed in Germinario's tensed shoulders as Bunting interrogates Hawk about his favorite artists and figures from the queer civil rights struggle (these scenes gave me PTSD flashbacks to the Bushwick parties of my early 20s). Delivering each line like he's circling for the kill, Germinario gives a painfully authentic performance of a gay man who has sharpened his rhetorical talons as his only means of defense.

Conversely, Kantor's Hawk exudes goofy naivete, which we suspect might just be a façade for something shrewder and darker (real power doesn't need to announce itself). As Finch, Murphy artfully embodies the most dramatic transformation in play, going from an Isabel Wilkerson-reading hipster to a bourbon-swilling Ralph Lauren model in just over 90 minutes (Jason Lewis's smartly selected costumes help). With an irresistible smile and come-hither cadence in his voice, Neumann tells the story of a man who is very good at his job — a catch whom Bunting will inevitably lose.

All four actors soar under Alex Tobey's less-is-more direction, which takes the form of a gussied-up, off-book staged reading. It takes place on the all-white platform that constitutes the biggest part of Brendan Gonzales Boston's simple and effective set, with the actors grabbing items (mostly cocktails) from visible prop tables on either side. This allows the stage action to drive forward, even when the writing seems to stall.

Berry is clearly a keen observer of gay male society (a homornithologist, if you will) and the situations he depicts have the undeniable stench of truth. Even the witty gay banter is a C , the kind of wordplay you might actually overhear at Empanada Mama, rather than the badinage showcased on Will & Grace.

However, the unsubtle avian names of the characters ought to be our first clue that this play is too calculated for its own good. Berry's dull succession of two-person scenes all seem to be leading up to the spectacular finale (the only scene with all four actors). What we guess within the first 10 minutes will happen at the end does indeed, making us wince but not gasp. Is this a 21st-century take on Greek tragedy or just a playwright who knows what he wanted to say and worked backward? Maybe a bit of both.

Rough Trade is an honest depiction of gay life under the gods of capital, in which our finely cultivated scruples are made ridiculous by forces largely beyond our control. If you're a struggling young actor in New York, you might not need to see this drama onstage because you live it every day. Why wouldn't you grab a little comfort if it's within your reach?