'The Spoils' by Jesse Eisenberg

Allen may have had a patent on the neurotic nerdy type for decades, but now the torch is being passed. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Like Allen, Eisenberg is an actor/writer with a sophisticated, urbane worldview, an innate sense of tragicomedy, and a love of self-loathing.

He came to widespread notice in The Social Network, in which he played Mark Zuckerberg (another obnoxious loner). Eisenberg also appeared as a young architectural student in To Rome with Love — a film that Allen wrote, directed, and starred in — in which he learned more about playing the schlemiel from the master himself. Recently, he played a self-centered young writer in his own play, The Revisionist, opposite Vanessa Redgrave.

Now Eisenberg is starring in his provocative new play, The Spoils, produced by the New Group at the Signature Center in New York. His character, Ben, outstrips Allen’s self-portrayals when it comes to self-absorption, self-destruction, and really, really bad behavior. Ben is a depressed 20-something who is fast amounting to nothing. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he lives in a stylish New York apartment (bought for him by his father, whom he hates). A filmmaker manqué (he was thrown out of NYU), he lazes around his flat, hiding from the world, smoking pot, and preying upon his trusting roommate Kalyan, an MBA candidate from Nepal. Kalyan (played by the endearing Kunal Nayyar of Big Bang Theory fame) is so grateful to have a place to live that he tolerates all kinds of abuse from Ben, who has nothing better to do than torture — and at the same time, cling to — his naïve, unsuspecting victim.

Then Ben runs into Ted (Michael Zegen), an elementary school friend, who, he learns, will be marrying Sarah (Erin Darke), the girl of Ben’s dreams since third grade. (He shares the graphic details of those puerile dreams with Kalyan, and believe me, Woody Allen hasn’t yet conjured up a more bizarre, scatalogical sexual fantasy than Eisenberg’s Ben).

An orgy of destruction

So at last Ben has a cause, to find a way to capture Sarah’s heart. Toward that end, Ben and Kalyan organize a Nepalese dinner party in Ben’s flat, during which Ben tries desperately to impress Sarah about his directorial accomplishments (he’s lying, of course; he hasn’t done a thing). The party (directed expertly by Scott Elliott) degenerates into a wild orgy of destruction brought on by Ben, who lashes out against his friends through a cloud of the marijuana he insists on smoking. He continues his downhill spiral throughout the second act, until he is forced to confront his self-centeredness and spiritual poverty.

Like Woody Allen, Eisenberg writes about the contemporary malaise of the privileged, educated urban classes, but of the new millennial generation. His 20-something types — including Ted, the two-dimensional investment banker, and Kalyan’s girlfriend Reshma (Annapurna Sriram), the materialistic medical resident — are recognizable. But he also offers deeply humane portrayals, like the sweet, soulful Sarah, who teaches math to delinquent high school students, and the kindly Kalyan, both of whom offer compassion to the humiliated Ben at his lowest point.

A nonexistent documentary

“People cannot go through life happy,” says Ben, who tells Sarah at that fateful dinner party that he has made a documentary featuring an elderly homeless New Yorker who forages through street garbage and shares his dinner with a dog. Sarah is touched by the story and eager to see the film, so between Acts I and II, Ben actually shoots some footage. It’s an awkward, incomplete effort: Ben may have an artistic impulse with a social message, but he doesn’t have the self-discipline, stamina, or maturity to follow through.

The crowning achievement of this hard-hitting satire is Eisenberg playing his own flawed creation. It’s a kinetic, charismatic performance of a lost soul determined to travel the road to Dostoevskian damnation. It’s also a prophetic view of millennials — those who will make it, and those who may very well not.