STAGE REVIEWS : On the Road to Oblivion in ‘Beach Play’

Losers are a hot subject for today’s playwrights, but few of them juggle the dangerous fires playwright David Darmstaedter takes on in “Beach Play,� the final entry in the Tuesday series of “Triskaideka.�

There is absolutely nothing redeemable about Phil and Arnie. They don’t even have enough rope left to tie a knot in.

Phil lifts weights in his brother’s beachfront pad, thinks about thieving and suicide, and waits.

Arnie has a key to the pad, but not to life. A failed porno actor whose latest girlfriend gave him the boot, he’s a busboy who couldn’t even make it as a waiter.

That they find a twisted temporary salvation in each other is only another step toward oblivion, but the trip they take getting there is utter magic under the co-direction of Timothy McNeil and T. Baker Rowell. The dialogue is rich in insight and crackles with wit, providing a seaside fun house for the impeccable virtuoso performances of Alan Gelfant as Phil and Mark Ruffalo as Arnie.

Barbara Lindsay’s “Grunions,� directed by Milton Justice, is a tender, loving glance at a speed-bump in a marriage, symbolized by the hope of seeing the tiny fish flop onto the beach. Sanford Clark and Elizabeth Reilly are charming as the couple.

The evening’s two opening plays are a disappointment.

David Bottrell’s “The Monkey Business� is a one-joke piece about a women’s club dedicated to the survival of a zoo’s primate house, and Michael Hacker’s “Spoil� is about obsession, but is mostly obsessed with its own shape and cleverness.