Ever see a play at the Union Garage? Let me paint a picture: a smallish, fringier venue utilized mostly by smallish, fringier theater companies. It's ramshackle, a hole in the wall, divided into two separate performance areas. The foyer is lit by one of those really tacky halogen lamps everyone had in college, and it sports hand-me-down barf green faux leather sofas. It has a popcorn ceiling (A POPCORN CEILING!), gets hellishly hot sometimes, and the seats make my ass fall asleep. Yes--Union Garage is what laymen might call a dump.

I bring this up because I'm at the Union Garage all the time, and each time I walk in (as opposed to the 5th Avenue or ACT, etc.) I have few expectations. So when something dazzling happens (and it does), it's worth sitting through all of the other iffy stuff and getting numb butt cheeks.

Little White Pill was more on the iffy side.

Here's the setup: There's this aging e-commerce CEO--a world-class asshole-- who has serious issues with the whole get-old-and-die thing. He swallows fistfuls of vitamins and gulps herbal brews trying to maintain his hellish youth. But mostly he just bitches and whines about getting old, out loud, at length. Other characters breeze through (an ex-wife, an aging mother, a co-worker) with little impact and to confusing ends. So basically this play is an extended monologue about how much it sucks to get older, juxtaposed with an equal amount of vain overcompensation and misguided machismo--an extended monologue from a ranting jerk. And the script needs some editing, stat.

There was, however, something I really liked, and that was Benjamin Huber, who played the mysterious street kid; he had a natural charm. There were other glimmers of good acting too, but other characters made too little an impact on the story to make one on the audience. The production had a very "work in progress" feel to it--like a good first effort. Just not good enough to suffer the heartbreak of slumbering ass cheeks.