Review - Boy's Life: I Wish I Could Go Back To College

If you're feeling nostalgic for those sweet innocent days when guys could continually act like self-centered jerks and intelligent, attractive women would sleep with them anyway, a trip to Second Stage's funny and energetic revival of Howard Korder's Boy's Life is certainly in order.

A coming of age comedy where nobody comes of age, Boy's Life may have been considered insightful, edgy, even shocking stuff at its 1988 premiere. Now it's the kind of play where you can just sit back and laugh at the stilted evolution of its main characters from, as one of them puts it, "campus cutups to wasted potential."

Named after the monthly magazine published by the Boy Scouts, the play centers around the attempts at sexual conquest, sometimes mistaken for love, by three 20-something buddies fresh out of college who still haven't caught on to the whole "maturity" thing. The awkward Phil (Jason Biggs) is reunited with Karen (Michelle Federer) at a party and tries to get her to spend a weekend alone with him despite his having snuck out of her bed before she awoke and never calling after their first date. Self-styled ladies man Jack (Rhys Coiro), married with a young son, attracts the attention of passing jogger Maggie (Stephanie March) who sees right through him (and he knows she sees right through him) and yet is so bored by her current beau that she'll willing to give him a shot.

Sad-sack stoner Don (Peter Scanavino) may actually see a bit of "responsible adulthood" through the Neanderthal glass ceiling in his relationship with waitress/sculptor Lisa (Betty Gilpin), though he can't resist taking home an amusingly eccentric woman (Laura-Leigh) he randomly meets in a record store. The play's one attempt at serious dramatics, where Don tries to explain his infidelity, is capped by a line that no doubt prompted intense discussions between couples in the late 80s but is now a tired cliché even unworthy of Jerry Springer reruns.

Director Michael Grief has his cast revved up at an entertaining level of sitcom sexiness. Mark Wendland's set locations are contained in large rectangular cases like shoebox dioramas mounted on wheels. The cast makes an adrenaline-rushed production out of every set change, choreographed to the blaring rock pumped in by sound designer Fitz Patton.

While I'm not suggesting that the situations depicted in Boy's Life don't exist anymore, the play is absolutely of its time. And while the fellas do learn a lesson or two by the final scenes, you get the feeling they'd still find a lifetime of futons, cheap beer and interchangeable women far more satisfying.

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