Something significant -- and entertaining, to boot -- is going on one flight up at the Tada Theater on 28th Street. Four people maneuver through their relationships in a modern little play that (hallelujah!) knocks the stuffing out of a zeitgeist that is very potent and very scary.

In Micheline Auger's "The Feminism of a Soft Merlot, or (How the Donkey Got Punched)", authentic men and women strain to make the most of the romantic empowerment effectively crushing them as human beings.  Kareena, Teddy, Sam, and Kyle are so today, they are nearly texts. Yet each one is someone you know (or is you, my friend), and there is not a single drop of caricature anywhere to be seen.  All have dimension, and the subtle tragedy of the piece lies in the voluntary sacrifice of dimension for the sake of that thing of what-we-are-all-entitled-to.  It is so real, you sort of want to leap on the stage and smack at least a few of them. Or smack your date, whom you love, who is real, and who does precisely the same, sad entitlement tango of the self.

Kareena encourages Sam, her prudish BFF, to date a gentleman she herself had toyed with online. Sam then unleashes her inner non-prude; Kareena steers into her own crisis by clawing at Teddy, who loves her but infuriatingly fails to accommodate her insistence on sexual gratification as what surely must make a person whole; and Kyle, Sam's guy and AC (artistically correct) pornographer, floats above and within the entire scenario as an angel or demon of Everything's Cool. There are about six critical social issues here and every one belongs as seamlessly to the comedy/drama as the living room furniture. Remarkable.

Of the quartet of fully realized performances, perhaps Patrick Daniel Smith merits an extra nod for expanding the thanklessness of the good guy. Of Audrey Alford's direction, nothing more need be said than that you never once see it.  Raise your glass of Merlot, for here is excellent theater. And a toast to the donkey, too.