Two Wrongs, a new play by Scott Caan

Is there such a thing as too much self-knowledge? Is the pursuit of love helped by therapy, or hurt by it? There is a crazy and chaotic element to falling in love that perhaps does not fit into the “rules” of what mental health means in our self-help-focused society, but is that necessarily a trap? Scott Caan’s new play, Two Wrongs, which opened last weekend at the Mineral Theatre Company’s Lounge Theatre, produced by Mike O’Malley and directed by Missy Yager, examines the confluence of love and therapy, neurosis and happiness, and the play is a ride and a half. Well-written, observant, hilarious, and touching, Two Wrongs has, at its heart, a deep yearning for connection, for love, for finding that one, your mate.

Larry Clarke plays the therapist, and Bre Blair and Val Lauren play two of his clients. One day, due to an apparent scheduling mix-up, Blair and Lauren run into each other in the therapist’s waiting room. She freaks out that someone else is there. Normally the room is empty because it is HER time. She doesn’t want to be seen. Therapy should be confidential and anonymous. Security has been breached. All is lost! Lauren (a really funny and relaxed actor) tries to talk to her, tries to joke with her about the mix-up, but she is having NONE of it. Blair is hysterical, as she staunchly turns her back on the man sitting less than a foot away, insisting that this is HER time, not HIS time, and to please go away and come back when she is no longer there.

The dialogue zips and sparks. It’s really fun stuff, especially because both of these people are DEEP into therapy, and so they try to be aware, sensitive, and yet they cannot hide their own neuroses. These never tip off into parody, or mockery, meaning: neither of them seem stereotypically “cray cray”. They are people who are trying to work on themselves. They have problems. They are trying to do better for themselves.

Despite this inauspicious meeting, the man goes into his therapy session and he can’t stop talking about that girl he met in the waiting room. There was something about her he liked. She was “pretty and smart”, and that was what he liked about her. The therapist keeps trying to talk about deeper underlying issues, but the man is determined. He wants a date with that girl, and he wants the therapist to help him set it up.

The therapist reluctantly embarks on a journey of deception, using his therapy sessions with the two people to basically say, “He really likes you – do you like him? Check yes or no.”

Bre Blair has to create a character here who is deeply unhappy, and yet really prefers being alone. There is always something wrong with every guy she dates, and she can’t deal with it anymore. She has a hilarious monologue about one date she went on with a man she (and her therapist) now refer to as “the burping guy”. He burped at the table, apparently, and then blew the burped-out air off to the side with his mouth, and it was such a gross moment that she can’t get it out of her head. He may be her Prince Charming but the burp is something from which she will not recover. Scott Caan shows one of his many gifts as a writer here. This is an acute observation of a certain kind of perfectionist woman, and yet he never makes the mistake of labeling her as “high-maintenance”, or judging her. Because this is a play about therapy, it’s all about what is REALLY going on with these people. Maybe it is that she fears intimacy, and so therefore she focuses on the tiny foibles and flaws of her dates, so that she won’t have to commit, and therefore risk getting hurt. It is totally clear that that is what is going on with her, and yet there she is, lying in the therapist’s couch, ranting about the way this guy burped and how disgusting it was. The script is fantastic in that way: it operates on multiple levels simultaneously.

The man and the woman do begin to date. It’s not like a normal date, where perhaps you want to put on your best face, and present a totally awesome persona to your prospective mate. Here, because they both know the other is in therapy, they can get to the truth much quicker. I loved that aspect of the script. Therapy is an easy target for mockery, but sometimes that mockery is TOO easy. Sure, therapy can be over-used or abused, but at the same time, there is nothing worse than a person who THINKS they are awesome, and yet project nothing but weirdness and hostility and unexamined issues. Two Wrongs doesn’t point the finger at therapy as the problem. It actually is seen as a healthy pursuit, and helps these two lost somewhat damaged souls to connect. “So what’s wrong with you?” she asks him, with the understanding that something must be, since he is in therapy. She gets it. Something is “wrong” with her as well.

Bre Blair has to start the show as a chatty neurotic, constantly second-guessing herself with her therapist, and struggling to find her own truth. Through the course of this show (which is not long), she has to blossom completely, bursting forth into full flower – the true goal of therapy, if you think about it – and Blair is superb in showing that transformation. She is funny, sweet, sometimes difficult, and it’s exhilarating to watch her find her own power. She creates a character that is believable, relateable, and also flawed and perhaps dangerous. There’s a twist in the script that requires us to believe that she could behave in an unpredictable and impulsive manner. Blair nails that dynamic. I buy it completely. Yup, I could totally see her blossoming a bit, and then realizing, “Holy shit, this is scary and new”, and suddenly clamping back down into her old ways. Blair doesn’t miss a beat throughout. She’s wonderful.

Val Lauren, as the man, is terrific. I loved his energy on stage. He seemed like a practical character, a guy who had some issues and so was going to therapy to try to figure it out, but he wasn’t passive in that process. He challenges the therapist from time to time – (“No, no, no, don’t do that, don’t get all professional on me, just talk to me …”) and he also challenges her. He is interested in her. He is interested in her in a way he has never been interested in a woman before. What is that about? It’s all new territory for him, and Lauren manages to suggest this in subtle and really eloquent ways. He has a short monologue where he talks about her, and what she is to him – and he has one line where he says, “To me, you’re perfect in every way.” A simple line, right? But handled wrong, it could be deadly. Too sentimental, perhaps, or cliched. However: Love itself is a cliche. We’re all different, but there are certain rituals everyone goes through in the terrifying process of falling in love, and in that moment, where he tells her she is perfect in every way, Lauren plays it as though he is discovering it for the first time. He clicks into the underbelly of the thing, the truth, the realization aspect of falling in love. It’s not easy for some of us. Some of us have problems even just being with other human beings. Lauren, at the beginning of the play, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, slouched in his chair, twitchy, pesters her in the waiting room to look at him, joking with her about her paranoia. He reminded me (just go with it, please) of Rocky Balboa, in the early scenes of Rocky, where we see a man who, just by his physical gifts and presence, should (should) be completely at home in the world, and yet – there’s something about Rocky that is just yearning for connection. He is isolated. And yet, tragically for him, he is a true extrovert. That extroverted side of him has been squashed down, put into sinister use by the loan shark and others … but if you watch how he chats up Adrian in the fish store early on … he keeps it light and jokey and friendly and non-threatening, and all I can sense in those early scenes is the loneliness of this man, his desire for friendship, to be listened to, to be taken into consideration. Val Lauren has all of that going on for him in the early scenes of Two Wrongs, and so when he confesses, “To me, you are perfect in every way,” it comes out in a simple and true way that works. It just WORKS. I found myself invested in these two people, hoping they could work it out.

Larry Clarke, as the poor therapist caught in the middle, is hilarious. But look out for that sucker-punch, because it’s coming. He has this way of listening, sitting back and staring at his clients, which make you wonder what the hell that guy is really thinking. He has no business meddling with the love lives of two of his clients, but that makes him funny and human as well. There are a lot of things to talk about in therapy: childhood, dreams, job issues, family problems … but this therapist? All he talks about with his clients (at least all that we see in the play) is love and relationships. I don’t think that’s an accident. Scott Caan knows exactly what he is doing here.

There’s loneliness keening on the edges of the play, and while so much of it is funny, I found myself really moved time and time again – not so much by the events in the play, but by the search itself. Everyone is searching. Everyone wants to find “that one”. An intermediary is sometimes necessary. Sign up with an online dating service. Ask your friends to introduce you to new interesting people. Have a friend set you up on a blind date. In Two Wrongs, the matchmaker is a therapist. His actions border on the unethical, but the best part of the play is that the therapist is given his reasons as well. He has motivations. An objective. A life outside the world of the play. So many playwrights forget this. Or, if they don’t forget it, they do not have the skill to make it live and breathe on stage. The characters remain wooden, or schticky. It is hard to imagine any of them, oh, going to a movie, or just having breakfast, doing things normal people do. The world of the play feels artificial. But Scott Caan gives everyone room here. Room to be human, flawed, genuine, cunning, baffled, lonely. And although the entire play takes place in the therapists’ office (except for one brief scene on a bench placed downstage), I could feel the world, their lives, their concerns and interests, pressing in onto that isolated office. These were not people acting in isolation. They were struggling. The office is supposedly a safe place where you can come, drop the cares of the day, drop the persona, and say whatever you want to say.

This is a good thing.

Sometimes.

Here, however, everything goes haywire.

Director Missy Yager has done a superb job in creating the world in which these three characters must operate: The script is handled with sensitivity, finding the humor as well as the pathos. The set, with its Oriental rug, wall of books, and leather therapists’ couch is simple and yet immediately tells us where we are. Clarity is key in a play like this one. I loved the music chosen to play between each scene (beautiful and appropriate – not too on-the-nose, emotional), I loved how each song served to guide me deeper and deeper into the play, without telling me specifically how I should be feeling about it.

It’s been a couple of days now, and I am still thinking about all three of those characters, and that is a great tribute to Scott Caan’s script, and the entire team.

It’s a short run, and it’s selling out quickly, so if you live in Los Angeles, call to buy your tickets now: (323) 960-1057.

Two Wrongs plays at the Lounge Theatre, at 6201 Santa Monica Blvd in Los Angeles.