Keith (Peter Scanavino), Farquhar’s protagonist and alter-ego, is a Romantic, haunted by bad girls, worse deaths, doomed love. There's something off about him—you can tell from the under-decorated apartment in an Aberdeen housing project, and can sense it in the way he talks to Shazza (Charlotte Parry), a blonde from the local pub. He streaks around the room showing her bits of his life, but his well-honed descriptions and anecdotes imply that he spends too much time alone.
Shazza misses or ignores these warning signs because they're both driven by a compulsion to touch each other. As their one-night stand ends, he presses his number on her. And she keeps returning, unwilling but almost physically addicted to sex with him. Her face shows shock and disgust at her body's irrepressible urge. Shazza is too much of a social-climber to leave her rich boyfriend (possibly a drug dealer) for a semi-employed screw-up with (as she learns) an eight-month-old baby and no wife, but she can't stop offering Keith her body in increasingly degrading ways.
But as helpless before her lust as she is, Keith even more powerless in his attraction to her. When he spends money on Shazza, he defaults on a debt to an angry loan shark. When he feels her hand on his crotch, he ignores his sick infant's screams from the bedroom. And when he thinks he's lost her forever, he howls with despair and squirms on the floor like he's suffering from heroin withdrawal. There's no self-consciousness and no restraint in Scanavino's performance of the role.
Scanavino's fearless conviction, reinforced by Will Frears' propulsive direction, saves the play from its more melodramatic moments. Farquhar, like many inexperienced playwrights, tends to overplay his hand. Early on, Keith describes the plot of his favorite movie, the film noir classic “Double Indemnity,” as being “about how sometimes people just aren't meant to be together. Because it feels so dangerously like they are meant to be together.” It's the sort of line that a college student would underline and write “TRUE!” next to.
Most of the time, however, Farquhar's immaturity enriches his characters, romanticizing heartbreak and its offspring—depression. There's a demonic energy and despair that, Farquhar sees, can reach tragic depths. If it's not quite clear why Shazza hungers for Keith, it's never in doubt that she does. And it is obvious that Keith clings to his passion for Shazza like a drowning man.
Even richer than Farquhar's portrayal of obsession is that of squalid Aberdeen. The frigid cold of the Scottish holiday season seeps into an apartment whose plaster walls are cracked and nearly bare (designed with fine attention to detail by Thomas Lynch). His neighbor Murdo (a touching, quiet Robert Hogan) considers suicide in the off-moments when he's not relating horrific anecdotes about child prostitutes, teen gangs, and drug dealers. The economic depression mirrors Keith's own emotional hole.
Thin-skinned audiences might not enjoy the show's violent onstage sex, tempestuous emotional displays and equally heated writing. Perfectionists will be frustrated by the writer's habit of raising themes like religion and family without exploring or integrating them well. But Farquhar's a first-time playwright, and his errors come from the same place as his achievements. But the fire, which illuminates the darkest corner of human emotion, is enough reward for any audience.
'Rainbow Kiss' at 59E59 Theaters (59 E. 59th St.); $35
Photo: Charlotte Parry and Peter Scanavino in 'Rainbow Kiss.' (Credit: Carol Rosegg)
