Two characters in search of some intimacy

Peter Macdissi and Austin Lysy, in Alan Ball’s “All That I Will Ever Be” now at the New York Theater Workshop

By Steven Snyder

Alan Ball has a lot to say, and most of it can’t be squeezed down into easily-digestible morsels. He thinks and writes big, about how modern society is threatening to suffocate the way we live our lives, and struggles at times in balancing his more ambitious thoughts with the limitations of what a single film, television show or theatrical work can achieve.

His screenplay for “American Beauty” not only took the Oscars by storm; it took pop culture in a new direction. One looks at the Oscar-nominated “Little Miss Sunshine,” for instance, and sees the same dysfunctional family and perverted American dream that made “Beauty” such a sensation. These themes have become popular on the small screen as well, with shows such as “Desperate Housewives,” “Weeds” and “Six Feet Under,” the eminently popular show Ball created for HBO.

His works share similar concerns: That we are living in a time of aimlessness, artificiality and, above all, isolation. Yet for all their apparent bleakness — “American Beauty” involves murder, a loveless marriage and an abusive father, while “Six Feet Under” is based around a funeral home — his dramas still brim with the hope of an idealist who believes that the faintest sparks of love and happiness can still brighten the depths of the self-absorbed, shallow American experience.

And so it’s against this canvas that many Ball fans will embrace “All That I Will Ever Be,” a play that works far better as a broad social critique than as an intimate story of gay lovers unable to tear down the walls that they have built around themselves. Though for every literal-minded theatergoer who will feel disconnected from the play’s romance, there will be another, almost surely younger, audience member who will feel drawn to Ball’s depiction of a world built tenuously on points of fragile contact that threaten to shatter at any moment.

The audience is implicated in the message early on. Yes, we meet Omar (“Six Feet Under’s” Peter Macdissi) and Dwight (Austin Lysy), but we know almost as little about them at play’s end as we do at the beginning. Things start in a cell phone store, as Omar makes the first of the story’s three genuine connections that occur over business transactions. First we see him giving a customer tips on the best cell phone plan to buy, then minutes later he is in a vastly different situation, presenting himself with a different name, a different nationality and this time selling not cell phones but his body to Dwight, who demeans the dark-skinned prostitute by calling him “Osama” during sex.

Something happens, though, between these two after the transaction is over. They start talking as they get dressed, and then continue talking over subsequent encounters, trusting each other with truths they have not shared with anyone else. Slowly, Omar stops charging a fee, Dwight stops pulling out the wallet, and one night at a movie theater, they finally fess up about their feelings for each other.

Their conversations, however, are the only glimmer of humanity on this barren landscape. We meet Dwight’s dad, who sends his son money and prescription drugs — not out of affection, but as a way appeasing his guilt for being a bad father. We meet a businesswoman Omar goes on a date with, only to discover that she is using him as a weapon in her war of inter-office politics. We meet Dwight’s good friends, who hang out at his apartment, spout snarky sarcasms about pop culture trends, but never really say a thing.

And despite their bursts of honesty, even Omar and Dwight don’t really have what it takes to survive the slightest test of trust. As played by Macdissi and Lysy, these two men are broken souls — the rich boy in hiding who lost his mother and the prostitute who shares his body but never his mind .

More than a few writers have noted the similarities between “All That I Will Ever Be” and “The Little Dog Laughed,” which ends its Broadway run this month. But Ball’s message, however bleak, is far less original. There’s an empty hole at this story’s center that talks of life as a hollow, zero-sum game, populated by people who talk but never share, who cross paths but never connect. And regardless of how familiar the basic premise may seem, it’s still a theme that’s relevant enough to lead a theater half full of twentysomethings to log off their email, take off their iPods and buy a theater ticket in hopes of hearing from a writer who gets it.