THE LOST BOYS.

Resentment is scrawled like graffiti across the faces of the major characters in Eric Bogosian's 1994 play "subUrbia" (now in revival, in an updated version, at the Second Stage). Blowing around the stage like ragged refuse, the three boys who instigate much of the play's action have all-American names that suit their junk-food-filled days and porn-obsessed nights: Buff (the exceptional Kieran Culkin), Tim (Peter Scanavino), and Jeff (Daniel Eric Gold). This gang of post-high-school boys from small-town U.S.A., with their worn-down tennis shoes, dirty jeans, and stained T-shirts, are going nowhere fast--leaving tire marks on the backs of those who show them any love at all.

We've seen this type before. Their most famous predecessors hung out at Doc's drugstore, on the white side of the racial divide, in "West Side Story" (1957). Seven years later, Amiri Baraka, then known as LeRoi Jones, told some of their secret stories, with lyrical ferocity, in his one-act play "The Toilet." Some thirty years on, in Bogosian's play, these early Johnny Knoxvilles pick up where the "Spur Posse" of Lakewood, California, left off: they want to nail chicks and score points, sure, but their testosterone-doped minds are just as interested in harassing immigrants and downing the booze, pizza, and greasy Chinese takeout that invariably make one of them sick. Sporting the uniforms of discontent, slapping one another on the head--is this the only way for young white working-class men to express friendship? Their creator seems to think so.

Bogosian established his niche as a monologuist soon after his arrival on New York's downtown theatre scene, in 1976. (He was born of Armenian parentage, in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1953.) With his deep, husky voice, his large green eyes, and his dark mop of unkempt hair, Bogosian was one of the first working-class lugs to declare himself an artist in the androgynous age of Devo. A kind of federally funded Bruce Springsteen (he received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts), he produced a series of angry performance pieces--from "Men Inside" (1982) to "Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead" (1994)--that distinguished him from the relatively effete, intellectual monologuist Spalding Gray, as well as from Karen Finley and her physical, feminist work. Bogosian ranted in defense not of his own world view as an artist, or of a traditional underclass, but of the maligned and often ignored plebs in flannel shirts; he set about bringing men back from Mars. In his short monologue "The Fan," from "Pounding Nails," a male admirer goes from joy to bitterness as the object of his obsession tries to get rid of him. And in "Superman!," a sketch from "Men Inside," a little boy intones, "Hey Dad, guess what I did today? I ran as fast as I could and I threw a rock at a bird and I killed it! Pretty good, huh Dad? Hey Dad, when I grow up I'm gonna be just like you, huh Dad? I'm gonna be tall and strong and never make any mistakes and drink beer and shave and drive a car and get a check. I'm gonna be just like you, huh Dad?" While telling these distinctly male stories, Bogosian was careful to maintain a whiff of irony, so as not to alienate his audience with too much machismo.

As directed by the able Jo Bonney (who is married to Bogosian), "subUrbia" demands a great deal of energy from its cast. Perhaps the play's non-stop action is meant to compensate for its lack of dramatic variety: shit happens, but it happens over and over. Hanging out in front of a 7-Eleven-type convenience store, Tim drinks a six-pack. Buff talks about banging chicks. Jeff is going out with Sooze (the great Gaby Hoffmann), who is best friends with the bespectacled, fragile Bee-Bee (Halley Feiffer), who just got out of rehab. Sooze wants to be an artist. She does performance pieces about men being dicks ("Fuck the President. Fuck the Vice-President. Fuck the Secretary of Defense. Fuck the Secretary of Offense. Fuck the Pope. Fuck my dad"). By including Sooze and Bee-Bee in this male-dominated story, Bogosian is, of ...