"Never Swim Alone" shows much below surface of macho posturing

It is commonly assumed the male gender is the more competitive of the two. Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor seems to agree, judging by his clever and arresting one-act play "Never Swim Alone."

Given a splendidly disturbing and bravura airing by the Washington Ensemble Theatre, "Never Swim Alone" raids every briefcase-carrying, power-lunching yuppie male stereotype in the book. But it revitalizes them with a furious, choral text and intense physical face-offs — which require bravura acting.

That WET actors Michael Place and Lathrop Walker are up to the considerable demands of this Cain-and-Abel rematch is no surprise.

WET's company boasts some of Seattle's best, and most versatile, young actors, who can shine even with dicey material. And this novel piece really lets them rip.

Place and Walker enter WET's small theater in business suits and ties, glad-handing the audience and lightly sparring with one another. On a boxing-ring set, presided over by an attentive score-keeping referee (Mikano Fukaya), they spew streams of banal chit-chat, in frenzied but cogent unison.

Their obsessive sniping and top-dogging shows the childhood buddies are both "a bit too palpably desperate" to stop vying over who can skip stones on a lake better, play tennis better, insult the other's wife better and be "less not-perfect" overall.

Roger Benington smartly sets a frenetic vocal pace for the show, which Place and Walker remarkably sustain. But the tempo does not obliterate the script's critical moments of quieter desperation.

About 40 minutes in, you do start wondering whether "Never Swim Alone" has anywhere to go, or if it's really just a vigorous Darwinian skit.

Yet it does have somewhere to go — a little too simplistically, a little late in the game, but in time. A gun, alluded to, fires. A boyhood tragedy is recounted. And what seemed at first like bombastic but pathetic machismo turns into combat most dangerous and haunting.