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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
"All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others," Cyril Connolly wrote in "Enemies of Promise." Take, for instance, the sensational charmer Davis, who is the hypotenuse of the complex and compelling love triangle in Adam Rapp's "Red Light Winter" (a Steppenwolf production at the Barrow Street). We first see Davis (played with wicked bravado by Gary Wilmes) as he whirls into the squalid room at an Amsterdam hostel that he is sharing with his former college roommate, a bearded, insecure playwright named Matt (the superb, edgy Christopher Denham). Davis is a tour de force of liveliness; he feeds off the deadness in others, which goes some way toward explaining his allegiance to his depressed and inept friend, who, when Davis enters, has just attempted to hang himself from a coat peg with his shoelace. ("You're missing all the fun, bro. This place is a trip" are Davis's first words to his roommate.) Davis, who is a wunderkind of the publishing world back in New York, fancies himself an agent of delight. He is as pathologically confident as Matt is pathologically shy; he generates life, but at an emotional price to those who capitulate to his infectious energy.
It's easy to understand Davis's appeal to...
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