Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

Sandra Coudert ©2025  Salvatore Inzerillo and Dave Tawil

Hurlyburly-David Rabe's seminal 1984 Hollywood coke-and-chat play-was somehow on the mind of playwright Dan Klores (a quite notable filmmaker and PR maven) when he was creating Little Doc, a slice-of-life drama set in 1975 Brooklyn. They share many things in common-the coke binging, the gabfests about relations and tradition, the unlikely loyalties of men and how those same loyalties are ripped apart as well, and the woman caught up in the middle of all of them. So it's definitely the case that Klores's debut play has a whiff of familiarity about it, but Rattlestick has given it such a strong production you often don't mind the tick-marks in your head of plays that might have beaten it to the punch.

Set in a messy apartment situated over a local bar (ace designer David Rockwell does a smashing job of making these dual locales in Rattlestick's close quarters), a band of drug enthusiasts indulge in their many vices (pot, cocaine, alcohol-and in one case-heroin) while their sensitive brute leader Ric (Adam Driver), plans an escape route with his no-nonsense, actress-wannabe gal Peggy (Joanne Tucker). Peggy's ex-lover Lenny (Billy Tangradi) is part of their group, which still causes friction even though he all but gave Peggy to Ric, and Billy (Tobias Segal), the true junkie, is the quietest of the bunch. Things go awry when bar owner Manny (Dave Tawil)-Ric's father figure- is alerted to missing drug money with the aid of Ric's actual father (Steven Marcus), and Angelo (Salvatore Inzerillo), a druggie pal of the group who recently did jail time, is sent in as a reinforcement.

Sandra Coudert ©2025  Billy Tangradi and Tobias Segal

Director John Gould Rubin stages the tale very effectively, with lots of believably staggered speech and interesting uses of movement-for instance, Inzerillo-the most magnetic and intense of the cast-saunters amusingly around the stage like an alligator that has suddenly sprouted legs while Segal-a mainstay for tweaky nowhere boys-combs the floor like a sedated rat. The acting is quite strong despite not enough meat for some of the cast to chew on, but Driver holds the play together playing very much against type; he even seems to give the illusion that he's physically larger than I remember last seeing him.

Klores may be mining territory we've seen before-particularly in feature films set in the very era this play takes place in-but you do get a sense of his attention to detail of his characters. In one scene, when Manny recalls Ric's innocence as a child, wistfully remembering that he used to “put nosedrops in [his] teddy bear”, you can practically see it happening. It's exchanges like it that keep Little Doc from stepping onto too many tried-and-true Mean Streets.