The girl next door

Marianna McClellan as Anne in Jeff Daniel’s “Apartment 3A,” at Theater Row through Feb. 16

The girl next door

By Adrienne Urbanski

The sometimes overwhelming sweetness of “Apartment 3A” comes as a bit of a surprise, considering it was penned by actor and playwright Jeff Daniels, a man whose résumé (“Dumb and Dumber,” “The Squid and the Whale”) would imply a fondness for sardonic wit and sarcasm. Even his first New York production, “Thy Kingdom’s Come,” covered the sort of ground you’d expect from a seasoned Hollywood actor and lampoons the movie industry. “3A,” however, staged by Clockwork Theatre, a group of mostly SUNY New Paltz alumni, is earnest and sincere straight through. It seeks to create believers out of the jaded and to embrace sincerity over irony — though not necessarily successfully.

The play centers around Annie, a fundraiser for public television. After walking in on the love of her life performing sexual gymnastics with another woman, Annie packs up in the middle of the night, and moves into a conveniently vacant apartment down the street to restart her life. She becomes divided between two men: her somewhat doofy and adoring co-worker Elliot and her overly assertive neighbor Donald, who upon introducing himself makes her promise to never fall in love with him. Still, her unhappiness causes her to begin to unravel and she begins to use scare tactics to raise money for the station, like threatening Big Bird’s life. Taking place primarily in her small apartment, the play successfully transitions the same space with a few minor props into the PBS television set and a restaurant.

When Annie takes a leap of faith and has lunch with Elliot in an attempt to explore romantic possibilities she might have been overlooking, he reveals his Catholic faith and ardent belief in God. Annie’s admission of her own unhappy agnosticism reveals the play’s intent to make her leap a spiritual one. She tells Elliot during the course of their meal that there is no evidence that a God or an afterlife exists, and he tells her to notice the small things in life. After successfully persuading her into an afternoon tryst, Elliot calls Annie’s resulting multiple orgasms a miracle. He shoves Annie back towards the bedroom, convinced that God is speaking to them through their intense sexual compatibility. And while Annie does indeed feel renewed, she finds instead that she owes this awakening to her neighbor rather than her co-worker.

The play’s appeal is partly due to Marianna McClellan’s convincing portrayal of Annie. She never plays up the character as overly cute, and portrays her emotional ups and downs without ever resorting to melodrama, delivering even her fundraising pitches with convincing sincerity. The physical humor of her scenes with Elliot ( Jay Rohloff) are also expertly staged, warranting plenty of laughter. Ultimately, however, the story’s extreme sentimentality, as endearing as it may be at times, makes “3A” hard to swallow.