STAGE REVIEW : ‘Carnal’: Morality Tale for Our Times

“Carnal Knowledge” was a tough film in 1971, and it’s a tough play at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1988. Anybody who is disturbed by crude words and gestures should give it a pass. Anybody who is disturbed by the current state of affairs between men and women should give it a look. The sexes haven’t drawn any closer over the years. But it’s easier now to see what author Jules Feiffer was driving at.

When the film came out, there was still such a thing as casual sex. We see this as a dangerous business today. “Carnal Knowledge” prefigures our uneasiness. It presents the sex chase as brutalizing, debilitating and plain hateful.

It’s also pretty funny. A Feiffer play would be, wouldn’t it? He gets considerable comic mileage out of the American male’s need, first, to “score” and, second, to boast to a pal about it. When the guys in his story are still in college (Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel in the movie, Gregory Harrison and David Marshall Grant at the Playhouse), this is kind of cute.

But even here, there’s a certain amount of treachery involved. The tougher one is scoring with his roommate’s girl (Valerie Mahaffey) behind his back. Later, when the guys move to careers in New York, their buddyhood gets to seem a bit tacky--still tittering about “the bazooms on that one” at age 30.

When they decide to swap chicks for the night in order to put a little life back in things, we wonder if these guys aren’t basically looking to get in bed with each other. Not likely. Anyway, that’s not something you do with a person you like. As all their experience has taught them, this only spoils the relationship.

The latter point is adequately proven by Harrison’s relationship with a gorgeous stewardess who has made a couple of TV commercials and seems to know her way around (Marilu Henner.) The first thing she does is move in on him. Before you know it (i.e., two years later) she is whining about getting married!

The play’s most telling sequence is a leisurely montage that takes our lovers from animal lust to terminal boredom, each stage observed with absolutely precision. Actress Henner shows us the slow deterioration of a woman who didn’t realize that there are more ways than one that a man could abuse her, and Harrison shows us a self-righteous jerk turning into a monster, and enjoying it.

Yet somewhere we like the guy, or like the guy he could have been in a less ruthless culture. This makes it a different performance from that of Nicholson, who made the character seem a skunk (appealing, but a skunk) from the opening frame. Harrison has more time to walk around in the role, to give his character’s side of things. When a girl won’t answer his call, there’s almost a pang.

We also learn a little more about his twirpy buddy, very likably played by Grant, at least at first. The only problem here is the last scene, circa 1968, and it may be a costume problem (Michael Kaplan did the costumes.) But Grant suddenly turns into a cartoon of a middle-aged hippy.

“Carnal Knowledge” definitely isn’t a cartoon. Watching it at the Playhouse, one even wonders if it’s ideal form isn’t that of a novel. We’re glad to learn more about the characters than we did in the film, but we could use even more information.

For example, we would like to know more about the twirpy one’s failed, perfect marriage to their mutual girlfriend. She is the story’s most complex character, and she is astutely played by Mahaffey--and then, she isn’t there any more. How hard did she try to save the marriage? Or was she sick of the suburbs too? What was her side of it?

When you want to know more about the people in a play, you know you’ve gotten involved with them. “Carnal Knowledge” on stage doesn’t have the slickness of the film--and director Ted Swindley doesn’t try to disguise this. But we come closer to the characters, and are therefore all the more dismayed by how badly they treat each other in their quest for fun in bed. A morality tale, for all its crudeness.

Plays Tuesdays-Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 5 and 9 p.m., Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Closes Dec. 4. Tickets $25. 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. (818) 356-PLAY. ‘CARNAL KNOWLEDGE’

Jules Feiffer’s play, at the Pasadena Playhouse. Produced in association with Roger Berlind and Franklin R. Levy. Director Ted Swindley. Scenery Fred M. Duer. Lighting Michael Gilliam. Costumes Michael Kaplan. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Casting Susan Chieco. Production stage manager John J. Toia. With Beth Broderick, Liane Curtis, David Marshall Grant, Gregory Harrison, Marilu Henner, Valerie Mahaffey and Deborah Rennard.