Bad Manners

Bad Manners

Is this a dream or a nightmare? A man programs a computer to randomly compose music. The computer gives him what he asked for. But in the middle of all this binary coin tossing, he finds several perfect bars of Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” How could that be? Did the computer have a lucky accident? Or did God Himself reach down with an amused finger and stir the zeroes and ones?

There is another possibility that does not occur to the musicologist, who is a pompous middle-aged man named Matt (Saul Rubinek). His latest girlfriend is brainy temptress Kim (Caroleen Feeney), a computer whiz. Could she have monkeyed with his program, just as she has reprogrammed his life? Don’t be hasty about choosing the third possibility. It seems likely only because Kim is such an inveterate game player anyway, a woman who draws out the worst in everyone around her for her private delight.

The wickedly funny “Bad Manners” opens with Kim and Matt arriving as houseguests of long married couple Wes and Nancy Westlund (David Strathairn and Bonnie Bedelia). She is a successful academic. He isn’t. He has just been denied tenure at a second tier school, which hurts for lots of reasons, among them: (1) Nancy has tenure at Harvard; and (2) overbearing Matt’s success was once condescendingly showered upon Nancy’s former lover.

Matt thinks highly of himself. He believes his computer program will make him famous in the same way it would if he intercepted messages from distant galaxies. So does Wes he’s pompous and easily wounded and dark-haired chain smoking young Kim immediately singles him out as a target. She observes that Wes and Nancy have no children, and asks him: “Firing blanks?” She uses his antique bowl as an ashtray. She wanders about the house wearing less than she should, seduces Wes once in fantasy sequence probably again for real although much game playing obscures truth.

“Bad Manners,” by David Gilman based on play “Ghost in Machine” first performed at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre in 1993 like work by other Chicagoan David Mamet toys with integrity of characters subjecting them to devious games usually through two or more players whose motives are unclear but always malicious toward each other or their victims; here only two characters play key game maybe they’re playing only against themselves too Wes powerfully attracted to Kim but denies it when discovers $50 missing tells Nancy Kim is thief urges searcher searcher indeed finds concealed bill But same bill?

The bill removed replaced doubled fiduciary version Who’s on First Sounds silly but there’s way smart people can get obsessed tiny goofy matters principle blow em all out proportion And Wes goes weird over that bill

In the meantime, the proud Matt goes to see the editor of a prestigious scholarly journal. He has sent her a paper about his computer miracle and she tells him what she thinks of it. The character played by Harris is like someone from another planet; the four main characters are locked in their little rigid dance, but she isn’t. She conducts the interview with unvarnished directness.

Jonathan Kaufer’s “Bad Manners” will remind some people of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and others of Tom Noonan’s strangely engaging, neglected “The Wife.” Like those movies, it’s about intellectuals who’d rather verbalize their problems than solve them.

But it doesn’t choose to cut all the way through; after all, visitors must eventually depart and maybe routine re-establishes itself again later on; this movie is more about games than psychological reality, which makes it even more fun for that reason. There is a certain masochistic sense in which each and every one among them is enjoying themselves playing with minds especially Wes and at least Kim manages before she leaves to give Nancy an idea that might help her out some.

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