Playwright: Hank Perritt. At: Modofac Productions at the Second Stage, 3408 N. Sheffield Ave. Tickets: 773-549-1815; www.airlinemilesplay.com; $20. Runs through: Aug. 12
The name of the airline that abruptly canceled Richard Ginsburg's Frequent Flyer privileges doesn't really matter. What matters is that the retired manufacturer isn't taking their decision lying downno, siree! He's hired Brendan Scope, a young attorney specializing in litigation of this kind, to sue the company for their loyal customer's untimely rejection. Initially, Brendan's only misgiving is his client's dithering about a troubled son while searching for evidence of his own blamelessnessuntil the conference where the two men discover that they have something in common.
Don't be fooled by the photos promoting Hank Perritt's play: Our story is not about Brendan and his former boyfriend, Bobbywho turns out to be Richard's volatile offspringbut focuses instead on the estranged father and forlorn lover. Each is prepared to accuse the other of abandoning the boy they both miss terribly, but as both come to recognize the role that squabbling over corporate injustice plays in forestalling confrontation of their pain, an understanding arises between them. Despite their hostilities and suspicions, both gradually offer one another what comfort they are willing to give, and to accept.
With its intensely personal conflicts, intimate universe, brief one or two-person scenes and incidental music supplied by Myron Silberstein and the actors, Perritt's play seems better suited to film or, more accurately, television than to live performance. Although Brendan's wily negotiations with the airlines' legal representative provide humor mitigating the potential soapiness of Bobby's progress through his wasted life, it would be easy for Richard to come off a blustering helicopter-dad, for Bobby to be reduced to a pretty-boy slacker and for Brendan to emerge the self-serving deceiver his increasingly unstable paramour declares him to be.
Director Peter Connor refuses to allow this minor, but capably crafted, drama to succumb to vanity-production carelessness, however. Veteran Chicago trouper Gary Houston lends our self-made industrialist an avuncular presence contrasting with the youthful impatience of Brandon Thompson's likewise independent-minded go-getter, making for repartee generating the requisite tension. If the object of their contention is written as little more than a McGuffin (though Jordan Phelps struggles to render Bobby worthy of the fuss expended upon him), and if the plot complications are resolved a bit too tidily, the dynamic of the two principal actors transform the 95 minutes of this short-running play into time well spent.