Like a mom concealing vegetables in a brownie recipe, The Realistic Joneses sneaks the avant-garde into the conventional. Although superficially easy to follow — it’s about two childless couples in an unnamed town, both of whom are named Jones, and both of whom are dealing with a rare, degenerative illness — this play, which opened last evening at A.C.T., resists any definitive conclusions or any form of narrative closure. Its four characters fumble through the simplest conversations, pausing awkwardly (and frequently hilariously) to marvel at the ridiculous things that come out of their mouths. Empathy, or even just the satisfaction of being understood, is extremely elusive, and human language is a tragicomically inept instrument for it.

This play is about people who awkwardly inhabit bodies yet who are nonetheless gloriously alive. There are cues to this soft existentialism in the stage directions. Music is kept to the bare minimum — appearing only as faint grocery store Muzak or the background hum of a radio — but nature sounds are constant: crickets, the screech of an owl, the ambient soundtrack of the urban-wilderness interface. Characters share a glass of wine at a picnic table, contemplating the stars and the human condition, just as the Ancient Greeks did; that they can’t accurately name a single constellation or articulate their feelings hardy matters.

What does matter is the accumulating sense of dread. Playwright Will Eno wisely chooses not to dwell much on the symptoms or the prognosis of Harrison Leavey Syndrome (except to say that it’s rare, congenital, neurological and something like Lou Gehrig’s Disease). The closest literary antecedent to the increasingly ill Bob Jones might be Jack Gladney from Don DeLillo’s White Noise, who’s exposed to a dangerous chemical in an “airborne toxic event” but won’t know its full effects for another 15 years. Unlike Jack, Bob (Rod Gnapp) resolutely avoids learning anything about his ailment. His long-suffering wife Jennifer (Rebecca Watson), who quit her bookkeeping job to care for him, understandably finds that very frustrating. (Don’t read too much into the names. This Bob Jones has no symbolic overlap with the conservative college in South Carolina, and “Harriman Leavey” appears to be an intentionally empty signifier, too.)


Into their whisper-quiet, seemingly friendless lives come John (James Wagner) and Pony (Allison Jean White) Jones, who’ve eagerly rented a house down the block and who — for different reasons I won’t reveal — can’t really establish their motivation for moving to town. They’re a notch lower on the socioeconomic scale than Bob and Jennifer, their marriage comparatively unblemished. As the play unfolds, the two couples develop a relationship that falls short of friendship even as they confess their troubles to one another, and it’s criss-crossed with the predictable flirtations. “You want this conversation to end, but, I want it to keep going,” John says to Jennifer, in the only scene that doesn’t take place in one of the couple’s yards. (Their chat plugs ahead.)

It all sounds a bit grim, but The Realistic Joneses is a very funny work. If you enjoy word-nerd jokes that draw all the attention to themselves as text, and don’t get distracted by things like an unseen character inexplicably described as an albino, you’ll find yourself laughing at the aphoristic tics and loony, koan-like dialogue. For instance, this bit, which yielded perhaps the biggest laugh:

Pony: Nature was definitely one of the big selling points of here. Plus, the school system’s supposed to be good.
Jennifer: Oh, do you have kids?
Pony: No, it’s just, John hates stupid children.

Unfortunately, the casting is a little off. The Broadway production put names like Marisa Tomei, Toni Collette, and Michael C. Hall on the marquee, but if you ever felt like San Francisco was a second-rate theater town, our luminary-less version will only solidify that impression. The real issue, though, is age: Eno’s script explicitly states that Bob and Jennifer are 40-somethings and John and Pony are in their “late 30s-40s,” but Bob looks closer to 60 and Pony more like 25, which gives their relationship some distracting daddy-and-daddy’s-girl overtones.

Like John and Pony’s gift of a bottle of wine that’s opened by never consumed, The Realistic Joneses lacks much forward momentum. That’s certainly by design; these characters are not meant to develop. Unanchored by faith or philosophy, they’re basically jogging in place, ill-equipped to confront the essential pointlessness of existence. The most important movement might be the craning of their necks toward the night sky.

The Realistic Joneses, through Apr. 3, at A.C.T.'s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, 415-749-2228.