A: Is for acting and plays that ask you why?

Below the Belt, is described as Richard Dresser's "comedy" about soulless workers. Here in lies the problem. It is neither a comedy nor or all the characters soulless. This thankless play receives an Off-Off-Broadway revival by The Rock Garden a troupe that employs a lengthy rehearsal process. The idea for the play is interesting. Three men try to survive their pathetic jobs and lives on an isolated industrial compound somewhere in the middle of a vast foreign desert. A river, that runs through the compound is used as a metaphor for society, the goings on between the three men and the destruction that is inevitable. Larry Preston directs, as well as plays Merkin, the sadistic boss who uses his workers as pawns because he is so stuck in his own life. Chad Brigockas as Hanrahan is perfect as the consciousness of man. He pulls off the cynical questioning put to the innocent Dobbitt (Ara Shehigian) as well as the need of human understanding later on. What the play does show is the layers of existence. Everything and everybody is not what it seems. The Bruce Jay Friedman play "Steambath" is brought to mind here. It is verbal gymnasts for all three of the actors, as they grope for a human connection. When Hanrahan is thanked, he demands to know why, as the connection never exists. What do honesty and friendship mean? And freedom? And truth? ''Truth is the last nail in your coffin,'' states Hanrahan. ''Lying is the one thing that can save him,'' declares, Merkin, to Hanrahan. Everything here is abstract, absurdism, that contrasts entrapment. By the end of the play it is still the same and life goes on and on and on. This is not a play for the suicidal.

All three actors are members of The Rock Garden and spent a year working on this. The acting is wonderfully executed but by the end of the play, all I could think of was why this play? Why a year?

Performances play the Access Theater, 380 Broadway (at White Street in Tribeca, three blocks below Canal) from — Oct. 1-25 in Manhattan and for $18 you can see acting done by a troupe that has a lot to offer and that is a F.A.C.T.