STAGE REVIEW : ‘CASH FLOW’ STRAPPED BY LACK OF SOPHISTICATION

So much of new American theater is becoming a micrometric examination of behavior in smaller and smaller focus, that it’s a pleasure to run into a work dealing with what used to be called “crises of conscience.”

D. B. Gilles’ “Cash Flow” at the Tiffany has three top publishing executives debating the choice between company bankruptcy and burning their building to collect the insurance. Pleasure fades, however, when it quickly becomes apparent that the characters and their milieu are unconvincingly observed.

Jeff Doucette plays Elliot Gallagher, a relatively young man who has inherited his company and his wealth and hasn’t managed well enough to keep solvent. Herb Mitchell plays Casey McDermott, the company’s head of sales, a transfer who knows only one morality: the expedient. Marvin Kaplan plays Marty Blasingame, the company controller who operates as more of an anxious company conscience--he is like a Jewish mama worrying over all the things that could go wrong.

When they meet to discuss their options over what to do now that the company is going belly up, neither Elliot nor Marty has the spine to resist Casey’s contention that “this is business, no place for rules.” They decide to hire an arsonist named Wyatt, played by Bennet Guillory. He turns down the job; torching the place could result in a loss of lives. Wyatt does, however, know somebody who has no qualms about things like that, and he gives them a name and number to call.

Will they use it now that they know people could be killed? That’s the crux of “Cash Flow.”

Not many playwrights are addressing the morality of a decade unusually strident in its rethumping of the old Calvin Coolidge theme: “The business of America is business.” It may be that the ‘80s will go down as the ultimate American apotheosis of the profit motive.

But “Cash Flow” hasn’t the intellectual sophistication to carry itself on ideas and dialogue. Nor does it have a close knowledge of how subtle real business execs are with each other--the greater power is, the slighter its personal surface manifestations.

The production has a good functional look in A. Clark Duncan’s set (which might be described as haute K mart), but the schleppiness of the costumes (Kaplan wears a red sweater vest to a 5 o’clock executive meeting) undermines the characters almost as much as “Cash Flow’s” initial conception.

The deck is stacked against these figures from the start--there’s no serious inner dispute to enrich their debate. Elliot’s a pale, plaintive wimp; Marty’s a nonstop worrier whose fear seems rooted in being caught--though he has one of the play’s keenest lines: “We’re already involved. We know about it.” Casey has the finesse of a hammerhead shark.

Guillory as the arsonist, with his proud back, appears a living rebuke to the others. He is set apart at a table by director Howard Kalmenson in a gesture that implies inverse moral superiority. Wyatt is disdainful. But where is the moral superiority of an arsonist over men who think they’ve come to a desperate end of a certain line when they’ve otherwise tried to play by the rules?

The performances are adequate if imprecise--Gilles hasn’t provided anyone with a psychological background. Doucette’s Elliot is a blur, Mitchell’s Casey knows only one direction--straight ahead--and Kaplan has the good sense to avoid the obvious comedic references of such lines as “the ‘rhoids are acting up again.” Guillory has the unenviable task of trying to act out an insufficiently written part and to convince us of the sanctimoniousness of a crook. Such are “Cash Flow’s” confusions.

Performances Thursdays through Saturdays 8:30 p.m.; Sundays 3 p.m., at the Tiffany Theater, 8532 Sunset Blvd., (213) 851-3771, through May 18.