With The Pink Brothers, Allston James dissects a freaky family dynamic.

<></>“Love is like a bottle of beer,” Ben Pink tells Able, his sad, beer-bellied younger brother. “Every time you take a sip, it changes.”

When Able grimaces at the bottle of Moosehead in his hand, it is unclear which is more painful to him—his brother’s self-righteous air, the fact that there is some wisdom in the analogy, or the realization that there is less beer in the bottle every time he takes a sip. It’s a portrait in weary confusion and contemporary angst. The man just wants things simple and instead he gets lessons in modified love, manipulation and, ultimately, betrayal.

In The Pink Brothers, a disturbing, riveting, and frequently funny drama written by MPC professor Allston James, which opened last weekend at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, Ben can’t help but murder his brother Able in tiny pieces. He slices out painful hunks of flesh and pulpy ego with his scalpel words. He loves his little brother and worries about his sanity, but can’t bring himself to discard the façade he’s built to hide his own fear and self-deception. As a result, we must wait and watch the elder Pink burst into flame before our eyes as events force him to show himself for what he truly is.

The brilliance of Ben’s character as portrayed by Skip Kadish is that every bit of self-satisfied pseudo wisdom, every carefully-worded criticism, every ounce of antagonistic “advice,” hurts him as much as it hurts Able. He speaks down to his younger brother and wields his authority with a forced, ambivalent graciousness that grates against the skin and frequently makes them both scream in frustration. They are both powerless to the will of Ben’s ego.

Able has recently separated from his girlfriend and has moved in with his brother until he can figure out what he’s going to do about it. This isn’t the first relationship that has collapsed beneath Able and the play is driven by pointed conversations that reveal unpleasant truths about the two brothers’ perceptions of women.

Initially, we are more repulsed by Able’s complete lack of insight and wonder how he’s ever managed to keep a woman around in the first place. (He is unable.) Yet over the course of the play, Peter Reynolds does a wonderful job of conveying his character’s innocence, his honesty and, most importantly, his capacity for love. Able loves his older brother. He winces and reacts and gets angry when his brother calls him “needy” and a “toxic dump to women,” but it’s heartbreakingly apparent that he also believes the things his brother says about him. Able suffers from a near-complete lack of self-esteem and every one of his brother’s back-handed insults and double-edged pieces of advice continue to undermine his tenuous grasp of himself.

As for Ben, the elder Pink talks a good game, but it’s quickly evident he’s as much a bullshit artist and sex addict as he is an insightful and sensitive modern man. As proof, his significant relationships include a Swedish foreign exchange student he impregnated in the 10th grade and only sees once a year,  a woman who lives 647 miles away, and a blind woman named Renee. He grasps the theory of love and waxes poetic about women at length, yet he seems to have as much desire or ability to cultivate a real, long-term, healthy relationship as Baudelaire, the debauched French poet he admires.

Able, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to strap on the role of domestic bliss, but he is fundamentally incapable of being a husband to a woman. Especially to a woman like Daniela, played with venomous abandon by Deirdra McCauley. When Daniela slinks on stage, exposing both brothers for what they truly are in one fell swoop, James’ script hits a fifth gear and the last lap is a doozy.

Yet while both Ben and Able’s characters are rich studies in complexity, James has chosen to draw Daniela’s character with a somewhat disappointingly flat, dark violence. As the lone woman in a play about two men’s perceptions of women, she is portrayed as a devil. She tempts and curses and destroys like some toothy predator. With a woman like this, no wonder Able has been emasculated. No wonder these two men feel more comfortable with a blind woman—unable to see them for who they are. And subsequently, we must wonder about Ben and Able’s mother. She is barely mentioned in the play, yet it is her ghost which seems to hover over these two confused, lonely boys.

Ultimately, The Pink Brothers is a tremendously satisfying and rich character drama. Rosemary Luke’s direction is strong and the acting is consistently surprising and enjoyable. Allston James has created a truly rewarding, funny, if frequently disquieting piece of theater.

THE PINK BROTHERS PLAYS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHTS AT 8PM WITH A MATINEE PERFORMANCE ON SUNDAY AT 2PM AT THE CARL CHERRY CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 4TH AND GUADALUPE, CARMEL. $20/ADULT; $10/STUDENTS. 624-7498.