Michael T. Weiss and Kristen Johnston

Lucy Thurber's patchy work stars Michael T. Weiss (The Pretender) and Kristen Johnson (Third Rock from the Sun), both of whom deliver solid performances as an alcoholic ex-jock and his smart-ass enabler of a wife. However, while neither shies away from the uglier natures of their unstable characters, Johnson and Weiss - despite flannel shirts, bad haircuts and very slight paunches - are just too damn pretty, and gosh-darn healthy looking to really put over their roles as a forty-ish white trash couple subsisting on potato chips, Rolling Rock and scotch.

Instead of Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway in Barfly, their Martha and Herb are like scruffier versions of Jane Fonda's fifty-and-impossibly-fit blackout drunk in The Morning After.

Champagne Dreams, Shantytown Budget

But the real focus of Scarcity is on the children of this dysfunctional duo--two extremely bright kids desperate to escape their hopeless, depressing small-town lives.

Meredith Brandt plays Rachel, a precocious 11-year-old who devours Jane Austen and curses like a sailor. She's an ambitious, self-contained child who begs her brother Billy (Jesse Eisenberg) to sing her praises to Maggie Kiley (Ellen Roberts), the young talented-and-gifted program teacher from the big city, who's taken a shine to him.

At 16, Billy is sick of propping up his parents - mom's an assistant manager at the mall, dad hasn't held a job in years - and protecting his sister from dad's incestuous desires. Weiss does a good job of conveying unconscious lechery, telling Rachel to bring him a beer and sit on his lap, an invitation she cleverly sidesteps.

Increasingly desperate to get out, Billy turns to Maggie, the slumming child of a wealthy New York attorney. Sensing her willingness to help, and the obvious sexual pull he has over her, Billy begs Maggie to find him bed-and-board at a distant prep school before his dreams disintegrate.

While hiding the effort from his parents, Billy manipulates his teacher, leading her on sexually while flattering her self-image as lady bountiful to the underclass, all while using her expertise and connections to facilitate the school application process.

Their efforts work, though eventually he turns on his benefactress, in an ugly, though not quite plausible, scene of sexual and psychological humiliation.

Another Casting Glitch

The acclaimed indie film The Squid and the Whale established the kinetic Eisenberg as an appealing young performer with a bright future. And, based on that performance, it's clear why director Jackson Gay was tempted to cast him, but physically and temperamentally he's just not right for the role.

Eisenberg is too wired, too much like one of the hyped-up kids from Spring Awakening, rather than a child of promise trying to survive in a house of alcoholic sloth. Eisenberg plays Billy like someone who's about to jump out of his skin, certainly not the sensual animal so "connected to his body" that his creepy teacher describes.

And physically, he's just not believable as the hunky teen son of the statuesque Johnson and impossibly handsome Weiss, who tells Billy "I'm glad I could give you something," referencing the looks and sexual prowess that made him a high school star in his day.

Meanwhile, the lovely Roberts is described as "ugly" and a number of other derogatory adjectives in a painful scene involving Rachel and Billy, a confrontation which doesn't ring true because, though certainly gauche and condescending, Riley is too pretty and Eisenberg not handsome enough to pull off the roles of a "sensual" teen gigolo and his homely, enthralled prey.

A final note on the cast, as Martha's cousin Louie, a cop who regularly pulls Herb out of the gutter and helps keep the family fed in exchange for occasional sexual favors from his kissin' cousin, Todd Weeks does a solid job in a thankless role, while Hedwig 's Miriam Shor is perhaps the best thing in the play, in the small role of Louie's mistreated wife.

Though seldom convincing, Scarcity is admirable in stretches and humorous in patches. But this new work leaves its audience with the feeling that Thurber, despite her noble intentions, doesn't know much about the people she's trying to represent.

Scarcity runs through October 14 at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater, 336 West 20th Street.

For tickets, call (212) 279-4200.