STAGE REVIEW : ‘Perfect Party’ Doesn’t Quite Fit the Billing

Tony wants to give a perfect party, and nothing will stop him.

He’ll forget the protestations of his wife and two friends who feel pressured by the need to be perfect.

He’ll spurn the threat of losing his career as a professor. He will gird against the slings and arrows of the vampish New York critic who will judge just how perfect this party is for millions of poison-pen-loving readers.

Tony is not just another society column statistic. He is the driving force in A. R. Gurney’s wickedly satirical “The Perfect Party,” produced by the San Diego Actors Theatre at the Elizabeth North Theatre through Feb. 25.

Tony’s determination to party memorably is reminiscent of Gurney’s playwright alter ego, who wanted to write memorably in “The Cocktail Hour,” the Old Globe premiere that concluded a successful off-Broadway run last year and is now headed to London.

The San Diego Actors Theatre, one of San Diego’s talented homeless companies, throws its all into trying for a perfect production of “The Perfect Party.” It’s not quite that, but it does star one near-perfect performance by Brian Salmon as Tony. He alone captures the core of anxiety that makes his obsession so comically real. The rest of the five-member ensemble ranges from capable to skillful milkers of the premise, coming off as “Saturday Night Live” performers in a minor Gurney skit.

There’s no shortage of laughs under Walter Schoen’s direction, but the simplicity of its satire is less interesting for its own sake than for the way it provides a blueprint for Gurney’s later, more sophisticated work.

Both “The Perfect Party” and “The Cocktail Hour” are dipped in the ink of a playwright who has been trying for years to prove to himself and the New York critics that he, as an all-American WASP, actually has something to say.

In the process, Gurney has cast himself as a WASP version of Philip Roth, writing “Gurney’s” rather than “Portnoy’s Complaint.”

Just because a WASP has a trust fund doesn’t mean he can’t have an inferiority complex about his cultural importance and a sexual fixation--which is more anger than lust--for the group that tends to reject him. In Tony’s case, the group that rejects him is represented by Lois, the New York critic he seduces under the guise of being his own evil twin brother.

The New York critics were consistently unkind to him for years, Gurney said in an interview just before “The Cocktail Hour” opened in New York. “Sweet Sue” and “Another Antigone,” warmly received here, closed quickly after being savaged by New York critics.

While Gurney communicates a desire to please critics, he also longs to prove to his family that they aren’t being put on stage just to be laughed at and embarrassed. “The Perfect Party” and the newer, more polished “Cocktail Hour” have this in common.

“The Cocktail Hour” was, of course, lavishly reviewed, as was the subsequent “Love Letters”--all of which makes one wonder just what sort of angst Gurney will write about now.

Ingrid Helton’s costumes in this “Perfect Party” are lovely, but one wishes that the clothing for the New York critic, played by Patricia Elmore, could in some way reflect her predatory nature.

The cleanly designed production--the elegant set by Barth C. Ballard and his simple lighting--enhances without distracting. It keeps the emphasis on the show--which is ostensibly about the need to relax and go for imperfect gatherings around the old bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

But what it really seems to be about is the question Gurney never answers here: why he worries about what the critic will say in “The Perfect Party” just as he worries about what his family will say in “The Cocktail Hour.”

If Gurney’s recent successes help him stop worrying about what others will say, that might pave the way to a different kind of Gurney play. This one ends with the beginning of an imperfect party. Maybe someday Gurney will show us that party in progress.

This “Perfect Party” may be witty and diverting, but its shallow humor leaves you, like Tony’s guests, wishing for the imperfect party to begin.

“THE PERFECT PARTY”

By A. R. Gurney. Director is Walter Schoen. Lighting and sets by Barth C. Ballard. Costumes by Ingrid Helton. Sound by Michael Shapiro. Stage manager is Susan A. Virgilio. With Brian Salmon, Parker Tenney, Ronald B. Lang, Patricia Elmore and Amelia Emerson. At 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and 7 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 25. Tickets are $12 to $15. At 547 4th Ave., San Diego. 258-4494.