Imagine what might happen if Jon Stewart and Samuel Beckett had an offspring, and you will likely have envisaged Will Eno’s Thom Pain (based on nothing) . There is that wry, quirky, off-kilter humor that Stewart is so justifiably famous for, such as when Thom muses over a relationship with a woman “She wasn’t from here. So I had to speak to her in the international language of love: English. To which, she had little to say.” Then with nary a blink of an eye, Thom continues ”We got by pretty well, struggling for clothing and rent, trying to make the best of it, despite every kind of sleeping, eating and social disorder” – quintessential Beckett - bleak existentialism.

Though described as a monologue, the Eno play, deftly directed by Hal Brooks, really has two fundamental characters – Thom Pain and the audience, who serve as a foil for James Urbaniak while he masterfully shapes Thom Pain into one of the most compelling, poignant and disquieting characters ever to grace a stage. Each sentence he delivers in this brief but very compactly written play seems to have its own dialectic that ultimately touches upon the entire human condition, alternately challenging, provoking or moving the viewer.

In language that oscillates between the poetic and the mundane, Thom Pain… conveys the pain of existence and the resilience we seem to have to move beyond that pain.

As narrator, master of ceremonies, and participant in this life tale, Thom shares a little boy’s painful journey into adulthood which ultimately offers him an even more bitter dose of disappointment and loneliness. “ When did your childhood end? How badly did you get hurt, when you did, when you were this little, when you were this wee little hurtable thing, nothing but big eyes, a heart, a few hundred words? Isn’t it wonderful how we never recover?...What a good game. Who can stand the most, the most life, and still smile…saying more, more, encore…just give me more of the bloody, bloody same.”

As the often horrifying images of this little “no-name” boy’s life unfold, Urbaniak as Thom is continually breaking the fourth wall with tongue-in-cheek patter, “Now I think would be a good time for a raffle,” philosophical insights or mundane observations, “What if you only had one day to live? What would you do? That’s easy. You’d be brave and true and reckless. You would love life and people with wild and new abandon…What if you only had forty years? What would you do? If you’ re like me, and, no offense, but you probably are, you wouldn’t do anything. It’s sad isn’t it? The dead horse of life we beat, all the wilder, all the harder the deader it gets. On the other hand, there are some nice shops in the area…” All this Urbaniak does while flashing a smile that on the surface is always friendly, but somehow manages to send chills up your spine.

In the end, Thom Pain… is a unique audacious riff on life’s unfulfilled promises, the way experiences never live up to expectation but how we have to “keep in mind how little time there is…Try to be someone else. Someone better…I have to go. You have to go…I know this wasn’t much, but let it be enough…Isn’t it great to be alive?”

“Thom Pain (based on nothing)”

DR2 Theater

103 East 15^th Street

for tickets: call Telecharge 212 239-6200 or visit the box office

Seats $45

Running time approx. 70 minutes with no intermission