It's a gut-wrenching, articulate argument, crackling with blame and retribution in the wee hours of a freezing New York night.

Both men have seen better days, enjoyed moderate success and interesting women. Now, they've fallen on hard times. Harry (read by Richard McPherson) is down to his last $1.50 and comes pounding on the door of his friend Jake (read by Richard Pellett), who owes him money.

Harry also wants Jake's opinion on the draft of his new novel, a thinly-disguised fictionalization of their lives and loves. Jake thinks it may be a commercial success, but asks Harry to withhold it. Harry protests that Jake "stole his life."

Jake claims only to "have put it to better use."

Harry counters that everyone in the book is the lesser for it, and that Jake must not "knowingly profit from other people's pain."

What keeps this verbal chess gaming from working is that the audience ultimately doesn't care for either man.

Both are fiftysomethings who are bright enough to know what's happening to them but unable to do much beside rage at their indignity. Harry has been fired from his doorman job for not being servile enough. Jake is a hypochondriac who fears the public clinic: "I'd be dead from delay before they got around to mistreating me."

Harry cuts him no slack.

"And then the cancer of the knuckle? Knuckle cancer? Spent an entire weekend looking for a knuckle specialist. A knucklist! And then the cancer of the palm. Which was a callus.

"It kept growing."

But despite the wit in the dialogue and its dissection of the American quest for achievement and money, the play does not hold our attention.

The title suggests earlier, more satisfying all-night conversations over cups of coffee in nearby Chinatown. Flashbacks to better days soften, but don't ultimately relieve the relentless debate.

Vanita Rae Smith adapts the original script for Readers Theatre and directs McPherson and Pellett in rapid style that has them overlapping dialogue and pushing against the clock. Pauses are rare and tend to signal significant insights.

The hell-bent pace works in establishing basic personalities — which are more alike than different — but does little to create the internal character arc essential to good drama.