'Any Given Monday' not to be missed

I loved Bruce Graham's hard-hitting comedy Any Given Monday when Theatre Exile gave it its 2010 world premiere. Delaware Theatre Company's furious production confirmed my original assessment: I still love it. It's my kind of play.

But that alone wouldn't persuade my family to hike to Wilmington to catch this riveting rendition. So below, three reasons why any theater lover should see this play.

It deals with real life. Too many couples these days cheat or divorce. More than two-thirds of the time, men don't initiate the latter process. That it happens so often, and that Graham has written the only play I can recall that deals with this recent phenomenon, indicts those middlebrow contemporaries winning Pulitzers for scripts about rabbit holes and mathematicians.

However particular, Graham approaches these ideas through larger, philosophical themes: good and evil, human nature, whether God exists. His mouthpiece: Sarah (Lucy DeVito), a college philosophy major, whose monologue intrusions director Bud Martin has woven deftly into the rest of the script through DeVito's endearing performance and Jim Leitner's cut-away lighting.

The play is honest. Today, honest has become a synonym for impolite, if not incorrect. Graham's language and the attitudes of his central character Mickey (Michael Mastro) hit like a fist to the throat. Live in Philadelphia long enough, and you begin to resent the homeless and despise street crime. Mickey doesn't hide those sentiments.

Mastro delivers an exceptional performance, combining humor with a seething undercurrent of violence that illustrates one of Graham's minor points: Football and sports often provide a sublimating surrogate for male aggression. Anyone not gasping for air by the time this play ends already leads the kind of no-nonsense life Graham's play espouses.

Any Given Monday does what great theater should: It teaches us how to live. Graham's arguments and the conclusions reached by his plot and characters may offend, they may not resonate, but they stick, undeniably.

Need proof? I've never heard a crowd cheer and clap so loudly for a character's comeuppance.

Through Sept. 22 at Delaware Theatre Company, 200 Water St., Wilmington. Tickets: $35- $50. 302-594-1100 or delawaretheatre.org.