This past weekend the Behrend theater program debuted its Fall production, “Significant Other,” on Thursday, Nov. 1, opening night. Premiering on Broadway in 2017, the play has quickly become a widespread success, and the opening night at Behrend, save for a few faults, was no different.

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The play follows a late-20s group of friends. Jordan Berman (played by Jaret Kelly) is looking for love while each of his three friends, Laura (Emily Eiss), Vanessa (Molly Boniger), and Kiki (A’aryonna Fontes), are getting married, and slowly growing farther away from him, taking its toll on Jordan until the climax of the play. Throughout the play, Jordan also visits his grandmother (Sarah DeRiso) who serves as a constant reminder to Jordan of his growing age.

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Portrayals of character by the Behrend B Cast were generally excellent across the board. And in this production, they must be. The triptych stage manages location variation well despite its simplicity, but its simplicity also requires engaging character interaction, lest the audience be tested in actively exercising their attention spans over the play’s two-hour length.

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The length is perhaps the weakest aspect of the production, with dialogue at several points extraneous and occasional scenes completely forgettable other than that they occurred. The play is said to be a romantic comedy, but many of the jokes had a low impact on the audience in attendance (though there was a considerable amount of suppressed laughter in the form of rapid exhalations of the nose). This is not to say that the play is without utterly hilarious moments — it most definitely isn’t — but overall, the play comes across a bit more dramatic than perhaps intended: the ending rather bitter, but nevertheless darkly humorous.

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Technically speaking (scene timing, lights), there appeared to be no issues whatsoever, aside from a single moment of spotlight flickering dependent on quick stage actions, which was a bit out of sync. This is truly minor, and otherwise not ambiguous, only noticeable.

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Kelly fulfills every aspect of Jordan’s vanity, obsession, irrationality, and self-centered behavior. If we were meant to sympathize with Jordan, we certainly don’t; without seeing the play performed by a large theater company, it is undeterminable how true to form this Jordan is from others.

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Eiss, as Laura, projects an air of wholesomeness that makes the argumentative climax of the play commence with a corporeal sense of poetic justice for Jordan’s abhorrent behavior. She had exactly one noticeable moment where she misspoke her character’s name, but it did not detract from the play in any way (aside from the cast audibly laughing at the blunder in the back while a scene of opposite tone was taking place on stage).

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Boniger plays the reckless and free-spirited Vanessa in a somewhat muted manner, that one wouldn’t necessarily think to match, but in practice enhances the character’s punchlines with comedic dissonance. She seemed slow to be completely comfortable on stage, her voice somewhat quiet relative to her fellow cast members for only the first couple scenes, after which was not an issue.

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Fontes projects Kiki’s amusingly high levels of self-esteem without hindrance. Like other cast members in the beginning, acting seemed mildly (emphasis on mildly) forced — a primary example being a semi-exaggerated and repetitive attempt at enacting drunkenness for the first several lines in the play. Like many of the other errors made in the play, this too is minor and likely to be ironed out by next weekend.

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Secondary and multiple-role actors like Austin Johnson, as Will/Conrad/Tony, and Marc Cai, as Evan/Roger/Zach, certainly did acceptably well (although Johnson was a bit stiff); and each of them accomplished just enough variation between their three parts to know who each was at a given time. Similarly, DeRiso as Jordan’s grandmother did as well, although noticeably paused every now and again, as if to indicate that the next couple words were in the process of being recalled.

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In summation, Behrend’s “Significant Other,” is a cohesive and smooth iteration of the popular production. There is certainly plenty to find funny and enjoyable, with apparent but insignificant issues, and it is worth the viewing experience. There will be three more showings next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (Nov. 8-10) at 7:30pm in the Behrend theater. Cast A will be performing on Nov. 8 and 10 while Cast B will have one more performance on Nov. 9. Cast A will feature different actors for the following characters: Laura, Abigail Linski; Vanessa, Jane Brenc; Kiki, Khushi Kiran; Helene, Aria Meixel. Tickets are available at the RUB desk: $5 for students, and $10 for everyone else.