Right from the start, lounge lizard [Bernie] launches into an extended account of his latest sexual encounter/fantasy while his younger work colleague Danny hangs on every explicit word. Bernie fancies himself to be a ladies' man, but strikes out big-time when he encounters the bitter man-hater Joan, a schoolteacher who has loved and lost one too many times. "Men are only after one thing," she says, and then adds cryptically, "and it's not the same thing."

Neither knows how to connect. "When [Deborah] asks, "Will you love me when I'm old?," Danny answers, "If you manage to look 18, yes."

[DAVID Mamet]'s women, of course, get short-changed. Merry Lang's Joan has the shortest of story arcs. She is embittered from the beginning of the 80-minute play and never wavers in her views of men and relationships. You can see how her character could evolve two decades later into the female student in Mamet's Oleanna. As Debbie, Jane Walker succeeds in creating some sympathy for her under-developed character.