STAGE REVIEWS : Looking for the New Hits in Denver, Houston, Chicago

Where are the new plays? Not on Broadway, certainly. Times Square has seen exactly one new American play this fall, and that started at the Mark Taper Forum--Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This.”

For new new plays, you have to go to the resident theaters. Last week we reported sighting two good new comedies in a row at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven--Romulus Linney’s “F.M.” and Richard Dresser’s “The Downside.”

The news isn’t as encouraging about Donald Freed’s new play at the Denver Center Theatre Company, “Veterans Day.” As may be recalled from Freed’s psychodrama about Richard Nixon, “Secret Honor,” he sees American politics as a bizarre shadow play, veiling certain brutal realities--the hegemony of the CIA, for example.

As usual, Freed’s new play opens with a powerful central image: three vets of different U.S. wars (James J. Lawless, James Kiberd and Archie Smith), in a dayroom in a VA hospital. The hospital is about to be visited by the President. One of the vets wants to kill him.

A marvelous premise for a thought-provoking thriller. But “Veterans Day” is only a thriller manque . Its real purpose is to rouse the listener to the dangers of the American war machine, and the American fondness for covert operations. This is mainly achieved through big speeches.

As one of the already converted, I agreed with these speeches. The question was: Would anyone make them? Since the vet who wants to see the President dead is well-equipped to do the deed himself, his recruiting efforts seem not only unnecessary, but imprudent. What if he were overheard on the the hospital intercom?

Perhaps it’s unfair to treat “Veteran’s Day” as a realistic situation. Still, director Laird Williamson and his cast don’t suggest it isn’t meant that way. In any case, it’s never a sign of strength in a play when the characters seem to be talking at the author’s behest rather than their own.

“Veteran’s Day” wasn’t the only new play on view the other night at the Denver Center Theate Company. Another troupe was performing “Koozy’s Piece” by Frank X. Hogan--Koozy being a 1980s teen-ager with some of the same problems as F. Jasmine Adams in “A Member of the Wedding.” If this plays as well as it reads, it’s a charmer.

The real news at the Denver Center Theatre Company isn’t any one new play. It’s a devotion to new plays in general. A very practical devotion. For example, members of its ongoing Saturday morning workshop for local playwrights are allowed to use the theater’s Xerox machines for free. Greater love hath no institution.

Again, how many American theaters actually publish new scripts? Denver does, in an annual volume called “Prima Facie,” the name of the theater’s annual spring festival of staged readings.

Look for DCTC to become an important source of new American scripts in the near future--and not just heartland scripts, like its two best-known exports, “Quilters” and “The Immigrants.” If that was all this theater was interested in, it wouldn’t be doing plays by Donald Freed.

Houston’s Alley Theatre was also doing two new plays. On the main stage, Alan Ayckbourn’s “Henceforward . . .,” which London and New York will see next season. Downstairs, Joe Cacaci’s “Self Defense,” which may also have a future.

Playwright Cacaci definitely has one, unless The Industry turns him into a screenwriter. (He has already done a segment for “L.A. Law.”) He is a down-to-earth craftsman who has no problem with the idea that a play is composed of a beginning, a middle and a pay-off, and in that order. The Alley audience rose to his story like a trout to a fly.

“Self Defense” doesn’t go anywhere new. David Berman plays a shrewd, idealistic young public defender who, after seven years out in the real world (the Bronx), is starting to feel his shrewdness overtake his idealism. Will he burn out or will he snap to?

The answer is pretty much what it would be on TV, but that doesn’t make the process any less entertaining. Cacaci knows Berman’s lawyer and his cynical lunch buddies, not generically, but specifically. Staged by the Alley’s artistic director, Pat Brown, their story crackles along with wired energy and a satisfying number of complications.

“Self Defense” is about the law, but it’s more fundamentally about being a pro. Berman’s best moment sees him blind with rage when a dreamy underling (Kevin R. Shepard) botches a critical assignment. Then, having scared his assistant to death, he drops into a triumphant calm. “We can fix this.”

But at what point does a pro turn into a hack? Cacaci has another new play at Joe Papp’s Public Theatre this month, “Old Business,” also set in a hard-nosed world where ethics are optional. If this playwright stays his own man, he’s going to do useful work.

The Goodman Theatre of Chicago is offering a new English play--new to us, anyway. It’s Peter Barnes’ “Red Noses,” first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985.

“Red Noses, Black Death” was Barnes’ original title. It’s about a troupe of 14th-Century zanies, led by a holy fool named Father Flote (Ivar Brogger.) They manage to survive the plague, but they run afoul of Holy Mother Church when life returns to normal. Of such, says Barnes, is the kingdom of Heaven. But not Earth.

Staged by Jeff Steitzer, “Red Noses” looks and feels like an epic, a genre that the Goodman’s artistic director, Robert Falls, is interested in exploring. At the same time, there’s something precious and cute in its tone, suggesting “Godspell” or “The Fantasticks.”

One keeps expecting Barnes to issue some kind of apocalyptic blast against the universe, and against simpletons who try to smile it away. (This is the man who wrote the ultra-cynical “The Ruling Class.”) Instead, Barnes seems quite enchanted with Father Flote and his terrible comedy routines.

It’s hard to believe that “Red Noses” is simply saying that laughter is the best medicine. Perhaps another production would allow a countertheme to emerge. Don’t look for this play on Broadway, though. Too many characters.