Two men and a woman share a polyamorous affair that grows into a committed relationship – for a while, anyway – in Ken Urban’s new contemporary drama, Danger and Opportunity. Sincerity is the sustaining hallmark of Urban’s play, which gets graphic whenever its characters discuss sex, but otherwise proves to be neither salacious nor sensational – nor especially revelatory – in studying their ever-mutable dynamics as a throuple. The actors keep their clothes on. The play’s realistic staging within a 60-seat space lends considerable propinquity to the experience for theatergoers.
Premiering on Thursday for a brief run, Danger and Opportunity is presented at the East Village Basement, an aptly named venue located down the block from the beloved Ukrainian restaurant Veselka. Descend a short iron staircase from the street into a long, relatively low-ceilinged room. Padded folding chairs mostly are arranged in two rows against one brick wall and a single row on the opposite side. Between them the acting space is covered with rugs and neatly furnished as a modest, modern-day living room-dining area in a Manhattan apartment, where the story occurs: A little round table and chairs, couch, credenza, matching lamps, tasteful artwork and books.
The play’s three characters are educated, professional, earnest, white people. Christian (Ryan Spahn), in his early 40s, is a prep school professor seemingly as buttoned down as the cardigans he wears. Edwin (Juan Castano), in his middle 30s, is a low-keyed financial manager. This apparently uneasy couple shares a “monogam-ish” relationship. Entering their world is Margaret (Julia Chan), Christian’s long-ago girlfriend from high school, a personable individual newly arrived to the city with a marketing gig. Facebook birthday greetings after 20-some years lead to the dinnertime visit that opens the play. The trio consumes several bottles of wine during a series of quick, amusing, increasingly bawdy scenes depicting their first evening together while dishing out exposition. Margaret recently shed a longtime fiancé. The gay couple’s sex life has gone stale. Soon Margaret and Christian are sharing sexy memories that morph into talk of newly awakened desire that arouses Edwin. The drunken encounter concludes (for the audience) as Edwin murmurs, “Do you guys wanna –?” and the lights black out.
Well! Smoothly composed in brief episodes, the first and better part of Urban’s intermission-free 90-minute drama traces the evolution of this threesome over several months, as casual sleepovers that get more frequent are followed by Margaret receiving keys to the apartment. Sincere conversations ensue as these good-hearted people, all previously burnt by love, cautiously explore their new feelings for each other. Of course the pedantic Christian overthinks matters – his reference to Nietzsche’s advice for people to embrace risk inspires the play’s charmless title – but after six more or less mutually blissful months they decide to live together as a throuple.
The route the author then chooses for his story and characters is unexpected and not to be revealed here. This choice diverts the play from its bold original course and instead dives not so deeply into familiar emotional waters. By this midpoint in the drama, however, Christian, Edwin and Margaret have evinced very little texture and contrast as individuals. They simply are slices of white American cheese whose banal conversation offers no insights on what makes them function singly or as a couple or most importantly as a threesome.
Fortunately, the play’s fly-on-the-wall staging is terrific. Jack Serio, an Obie-winning director who expertly guided the premiere of Samuel D. Hunter’s Grangeville for Signature Theater, also is notable for an Uncle Vanya done in a Flatiron loft. Serio now brings ace designers into a basement to create warm, supportive environs for Danger and Opportunity. Despite spatial limitations, designer Stacey Derosier’s sharply-cued lighting snaps out split-second jumps in time and unobtrusively fosters seductive moods. Scenic designer Frank J. Oliva provides comfortable, handsomely accoutered surroundings for the actors, whose sympathetic performances bolster their underwritten characters.
Recently seen in The Antiquities at Playwrights Horizons, Ryan Spahn depicts Christian as more studious than stuffy. Juan Castano fills out the blanks in Edwin’s character by cultivating a sad-eyed soulfulness. Styled by costume designer Avery Reed to suggest a subtly androgynous quality, Julia Chan portrays Margaret with a bright face and an impish nature that later fades with adversity. The finger-tip intimacy of viewers with the actors, who never once acknowledge their proximity to the audience, lends a voyeur-like resonance to the production. One doubts the play would seem nearly so effective if it were staged in a conventional situation.
Danger and Opportunity opened April 3, 2025 at the East Village Basement and continues through April 20. Tickets and information: dangerandopportunity.com
