Internet thriller invades McCarter stage

"BecauseHeCan," the Internet thriller written by Arthur Kopit and directed by Emily Mann that is currently running at McCarter Theatre, proclaims its techno-trendy bent in its very title.

This title seems innovative and risky with its lack of spaces, its embrace of action without cause and its flagrant disregard for the comfort of the reader's eye.

However, this innovation is neither titillating nor provocative but simply annoying with its rather smug allusion to the practice of omitting spaces in Internet addresses.

"BecauseHeCan," a one-idea thriller, lacks the wit and originality of some of Kopit's other works, including "Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You In the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad," "Indians" and "Wings," which have garnered such accolades as the Outer Circle Award, Pulitzer Prize Finalist status, and Tony Award nominations.

Local Tony honoree Emily Mann applies her manifold skills as a director to try to illuminate Kopit's script with all that lights, futuristic looming blank walls, cushy white leather furniture and impressive performers can give it, and the result is disappointing.

The inclusion of modem sounds in the sound design by John Gromada, whose impressive resume includes the music for the Broadway productions of "Proof" and "A Few Good Men," obviously refers to the theme — computer hacking and lack of privacy in the Internet age.

Throughout the rambling monologues delivered by Gene Farber playing the villain of the piece, Costa Astrakahn, a horny teenage cyberpunk, modem noises screech through — reminding the audience, of course, that this unbalanced child of the Information Age gains all of his power through America's childlike faith in the power of technology.

Beware, oh ye bourgeois denizens of Park Avenue apartments, Kopit seems to warn. Beware, all those sitting smugly in their tailored offices at Random House, like the main character Joseph Elliot, played to understated perfection by the exquisitely polished David Birney. Beware, middle-aged emigres from decadent Europe who now wear short skirts, work at Sotheby's, and accept rides in limos with deliciously obsessed ex-husbands.

These perfect lives, encased in the cocoon of the bare glaring walls of the technological world, embodied in the stark set design by Robert Brill, are bound to come crashing down.

And why is that? Because of terrifyingly computer-savvy teens in neon yellow shoes who join hacker organizations that nickname themselves GoD — short for "Gurus of Downloading," one of the more clever quips in Kopit's occasionally witty script.

The younger generation, it appears, is not only mad, sex-starved and fond of screaming obscenities but also desperate with Oedipal anxiety, longing because of their inchoate lives in cyberspace to break into the sanctity of the older generation's established wealth and identity.

Kopit does not rely on the audience to grasp this point; he literalizes his metaphor by having hacker Costa claim to be Joseph Elliot's aborted son.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

In this motif of a son searching for a father, "BecauseHeCan" is reminiscent of the far more original, poignant and ultimately brilliant play "Six Degrees of Separation" by John Guare, in which another young man insinuates himself into the lives of a bourgeois middle-aged couple. However, that play bears a thematic resonance this tale of paranoia in the Information Age simply does not possess.

Despite the play's weaknesses, "BecauseHeCan" will apparently find great success at the McCarter where the primarily mature audience attending Saturday night's performance laughed uproariously at all jokes about computer illiteracy, frustration with IBM and "fatal exception errors."

Certainly it seems easier, both for the playwright and the audience, to assign their fears to the scapegoat of adolescence gone awry, rather than to confront their deeper fears of technology, sexuality and class conflict.

A more realistic, perhaps even more disturbing play would not reveal the hacker as a raving madman, as he is in "BecauseHeCan," but rather would allow Costa to use his computer skills — the skills that so intimidate the computer-inept Elliot — and succeed in the professional world, thus replacing Elliot on the job market and buying his Park Avenue apartment.

Instead, Kopit makes the hacker uncouth, insecure and even stupid, despite his seemingly brilliant and overwhelming grasp of computer technology.

Finally, the most convincing rage in the play is not Costa's desire to destroy bourgeois lives "because he can," but rather Elliot's frustration at his computer because he can't.

Perhaps a successful promotional tactic for the otherwise lackluster production would be to offer a free two-hour computer seminar to the viewers most empathetic with Elliot's plight.

The show runs through April 15.