Alan Ball examines avoiding intimacy, and its lack

NEW YORK - Intimacy alert. Or rather, lack-of-intimacy alert. Alan Ball examines the pitfalls of avoiding emotional risk in "All That I Will Ever Be," a slick, uneven drama that looks at folks who have a hard time connecting not only with other people but with themselves. Ball, best known as the creator of the superlative television series "Six Feet Under" and an Academy Award winner for his "American Beauty" screenplay, sets his hip cautionary tale in present-day Los Angeles. At the center of Ball's play — which opened Tuesday at off-Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop — is Omar, a buff fellow of vaguely Middle Eastern appearance. By day, he sells cell phones in an electronics store. At night, he works as a hustler with a primarily gay clientele. Among Omar's customers is Dwight, a young slacker who has not set his sights beyond selling a little grass and cashing the checks his wealthy cosmetic surgeon father sends him on a regular basis. Love, or at least a relationship, blossoms between the two, even though Omar decides to keep his evening employment. Commitment comes into play as do questions about Omar's real identity and where he came from. The man seems to have a different story and a different name for everyone he meets. And that's one of the problems with "All That I Will Ever Be": Omar's enigmatic personality. He's too indecipherable for us to care, particularly in Peter Macdissi's opaque performance. You are never quite sure when he is in full con mode or when he is expressing his true feelings. "I don't like to reveal things about myself," Omar says, and, boy, does he mean it. The man reinvents himself — as well as his sexuality — depending on the company he is keeping. Most of the other characters are equally unappealing, particularly the shallow, pot-smoking Dwight, played with the right degree of self-absorption by Austin Lysy. Dwight has a combative relationship with his father (Victor Slezak), blaming him for his mother's suicide yet still willing to accept Dad's checks. The play's best written scene concerns Omar's meeting with an older client named Raymond, portrayed with remarkable dignity by David Margulies. Raymond has a sure sense of himself, an honest practicality that is refreshing after the unwillingness of the others to bare their true feelings. Omar's feelings make an unconvincing U-turn at the end of the play, and he becomes a repository of wisdom for a tremulous john, played by Patch Darragh. Not even Jo Bonney's fast-paced direction can hide the fact that this unlikely change of heart puts the rest of "All That I Will Ever Be" in question, making it more a sermonette than tough-minded drama.