It’s all about connections. Mostly missed. Will Eno’s Thom Pain is a misfit of the 21st century. He wants to connect. He wants to feel. He wants to understand. However, he’s never been taught how. Or even been noticed to realize that he hadn’t been. So for an hour and fifteen minutes without intermission, he seems to be trying to connect with us. He doesn’t do a very good job at it. He is flighty. He repeats himself constantly. He switches topics like the personification of A.D.D. He tends to talk of himself (it is himself he speaks of, right?) in third person. He contradicts himself constantly and occasionally outright lies. He can be a mean son of a bitch. It’s this clumsiness that makes Thom so loveable. And annoying. Very annoying. But in a good way. Well, maybe just an all right way.

Actors Theatre is cool about giving voice to these kinds of characters. It’s risky theatre, since if we ran into them at a party, we would probably just get up and walk away. Thom really is that annoying. But we should be listening, because each of us is him, either at some point in time, or in some certain ways all the time. It is the act of giving the time to this socially maladjusted and desperately disconnected individual that helps us see bigger pictures. And Pain.

This rant is turned more into a rave thanks to Jeff Steitzer’s direction. Dwayne Hartford’s Thom is an active sort. He shambles about. Faces are gotten into. Audience members are mocked and ogled. Another is held captive onstage during an outburst. The world in which he barely, savagely exists is vibrantly-yet-subtly lit by Paul A. Black. His cheap black suit, designed by Lois K. Myers but more likely purchased from Goodwill, speaks, no cries, volumes.

It’s hard to call it a one-person play since Hartford’s Thom is already so shattered and represents at least three separate visions at once. Plus there’s us. We’re characters in this play. There’s a reason the houselights drop, but many instruments remain trained upon us. We’re addressed. We’re mocked. We’re screwed with. But the act of letting Hartford’s Thom do this to us is a penance for all. I think.

Hartford gives a dead-on performance in a role that is hard to pin down. He and Steitzer are not afraid to let Thom stare for long periods, drop in and out of conversations, memories, moments. Hartford’s vocal ticks and tricks are as repellant as they need to be without ever making those of us who kind of understand really consider leaving. But some don’t understand, or refuse to. The female half of the older couple behind me started to spit back nasty comments under her breath near the end of the show. Another woman left pretty early on. Bluehairs beware. Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a fuck.

And it’s all on the edge of theatre. There are many moments when the vicious dialogue goes too far. There are others when patience is tested. Strained, even. But Thom’s story or three are the threads used to suture us to him. And his need. And ours.