Roulette

He pauses from his morning paper, carefully removes a revolver from his briefcase, loads one bullet into the cylinder, spins it, places it against his temple and pulls the trigger

Nothing, only the hollow click of an empty chamber

Jon tidies up and, briefcase in hand, leaves for work. His troubles, however, follow him there

Jon's wife, Enid, is cuckolding him with his best friend and next-door neighbor, Steve, who shows up suddenly at Jon's office to ask for a loan

Meanwhile, back at home, Jon's rocker daughter, Jenny, is planning on sleeping over at her boyfriend's house and attempting to enlist her mother, Enid, to convince Jon it's all right

Trying to come to grips with this rapidly breaking home is Jon's perpetually anxious son, Jock, who's recently been rejected by his fraternity of choice

Virginia, Steve's skittish and loopy wife, knows he's sleeping around, but she won't let a little thing like that stop her from popping in on Enid to borrow a pint of milk

When the hammer of Jon's gun finally hits that solitary bullet, it sends the family over the edge of lunacy into the uncharted territory of honesty and reconciliation

"Every now and then a cliché sheds its skin in American comedy to reveal something raw and unsettling. Cultural anthropologists and savvy theater goers should know that this molting process is now occurring at the John Houseman Theater, where a sharp-tongued, broken-hearted and seriously funny new play called Roulette opened last night" ~ NY Times