The Best, Man is a surprisingly sweet play, considering it starts with the lines “Fuuuck!” and “Open sesame, bitch!”
The first is uttered by a groom who is contemplating making a run for it with less that an hour before his wedding ceremony, and the second is spoken by the rambunctious best man of the title, who falls flat on his face drunk (and barefoot) just after entering the hotel room.
The Best Man at first seems far too wasted to be of much use for anything but spitting out hilarious and filthy diatribes about Forrest Gump, identical twins, and strip clubs (“I just want to talk to those girls about their self-esteem and give them a happy meal.”) He accidentally spills coffee all over the Groom’s shirt, and the nervous breakdown this event triggers reveals the deeper truths, worries and resentments at the heart of both the relationship of the groom and the unseen bride, and that of the two male friends.
Arlen Kristian Tom’s script hits hard with a flurry of one-liners that had the crowd at the performance I attended howling. Some attendees were chanting “Threeway town! Threeway town!” outside after the show, which is a pretty excellent tribute to the quality of the jokes. The play takes a major tonal shift in the third act, and while the more serious material was quite effective, the change in tone could have been foreshadowed better earlier. Mack Gordon is moving and emotionally convincing as the frustrated and neurotic Groom, while John Voth as the Best Man owned the crowd from the moment of his entrance with a full throated physical performance. A pitfall of two-handers is that there’s often an imbalance between the two characters, and the Best Man does indeed get most of the best lines, and gets to both bully the Groom and play the hero.
Underneath the swearing and hilarious crudity, The Best, Man is wise about the envies and pleasures of male friendship. It accurately captures the tense feel and the epiphanies of a night of crisis. One of the Best Man’s monologues, a seemingly pointless reminiscence about a drunken high school night that turns unexpectedly poignant, will stay with this reviewer. And that line about what else is like a box of chocolates, probably will too.