ON the ledger sheet of life, it's not clear which of the two L.A. couples in Kate Robin's "What They Have" is more in the black. Both are attractive and artistically ambitious. Both are striving mightily for that ever elusive balance between self-actualization and self-acceptance. And both love to talk ad nauseam about where they're at.
The play, which had its world premiere Friday at South Coast Repertory, is made up almost entirely of navel-gazing chat. In fact, the slightest of ambivalent feelings can launch an army of words on the different shades of emotional gray.
It's a bit of a slog to be on the receiving end of so much gab, particularly when the range of viewpoints ("white and entitled" pretty much sums it up) is so narrow. Still, Robin, a playwright who was a writer on HBO's dearly departed series "Six Feet Under," is a trenchant observer of what can be called the Whole Foods set -- you know, those sophisticated, globally conscious types who are willing to rack up credit card debt for wild salmon and organic arugula.
The topics under discussion when Robin's sexy and spoiled quartet gets together could make a compendium of opinionated Vanity Fair columns -- everything from the current reality-TV zeitgeist to Wikipedia's colonization of collective memory to "The Secret" of Oprah Winfrey fame.
But it's not all faddism and flashy banter. There's a deeper question motoring the play's smart mouths: How do those who have been raised to expect the world come to terms with the inevitability of failure and loss?
It's a worthwhile investigation, but Robin's writing is more descriptive than dramatic, and as a result, the play's momentum flags. Life happens to these privileged characters, and they feel compelled to parse every passing nuance. Nothing is too trivial, which is part of the joke -- but it grows less funny as darker things befall them and they keep up their narcissistic jawing, as though silence equals abject death.
The story begins when Connie (Marin Hinkle), a highbrow-movie producer, and her successful TV writer husband, Jonas (Matt Letscher), visit their struggling friends Suzanne (Nancy Bell), a painter of abstract canvases, and her somewhat embittered husband, Matt (Kevin Rahm), a songwriter who's giving guitar lessons in the public schools to make ends meet.
Connie, who's eager to buy one of Suzanne's masterpieces, is obsessed with being pregnant. When she pulls out an ultrasound photo, Suzanne, who hasn't told her friends about her latest miscarriage, falls apart.
