Playwright: Daniel Talbott. At: The Side Project, 1439 W. Jarvis Ave. Tickets: 773-340-0140 or www.thesideproject.net; $15-$20. Runs through Aug. 24
The title two characters of Daniel Talbott's Mike and Seth spend most of the play moping and moaning about what's become of their lives. And though they're both very aware of how privileged they are in context to the world's many problems, Mike and Seth persist in bemoaning their fates as friends in their 20s who feel they have been cheated so far out of finding true love and happiness.
That's essentially what you're in store for at The Side Project, which is presenting Mike and Seth in its Midwestern premiere.
Talbott sets the entirety of Mike and Seth in a Ritz-Carlton hotel room during a freak winter snowstorm in Dallas. Mike is set to wed Samantha ( Sam ) the next day, but he is suffering from a severe case of cold feet and is self-medicating with beer after beer. Mike is sharing the room with his best boyhood friend, Seth, who is already in a foul mood since he's been having issues with his open relationship with his user New York boyfriend, Connor.
Although it's admirable for Talbott to depict a best friendship between a straight guy and gay guy in Mike and Seth, he didn't quite convince me that these buddies could have remained so close into adulthoodespecially after Seth moved away to New York. And though Talbott has said in interviews that Mike and Seth isn't a play about unrequited love, his two title characters do alternately pine for each other as friends at certain moments in the playeven though they are both very realistic that it could never be.
Along with the text not always being fully convincing, The Side Project's production also has some issues of authenticity.
Director Adam Webster has cast two very appropriate actors for the production. Derek Garza is convincing as the guy's guy Mike and Michael Manocchio is pensive as the disappointed dreamer Seth. But at the final preview, I didn't quite buy that Garza and Manocchio were speaking Talbott's dialogue as extemporaneously as they could have done ( perhaps it will come with more performances under their belts ).
Webster also doubles as the show's set designer, providing an aspirational hotel room that is a little too scruffy around the edges to believably be a Ritz-Carleton property. At least the sound design by Stephen Gawrit genuinely makes you feel like there's a blizzard storming outside.
Mike and Seth's feelings and concerns as conflicted twentysoemthings are legitimate and are well-articulated, to a point, in Talbott's script. But don't be surprised if you wish for another character with more life experience to come in and slap the two guys around and say, "Oh, just get over it!"