N.Y. STAGE REVIEWS : Still a Successful Mix of New Wrinkles on Old Surfaces

The Manhattan skyline is changing. Because of the fervent, often emotional efforts to save New York theaters, the real estate boys--Nederlander, Shubert, Jujamcyn--are selling the air rights above the theaters for high-rise offices and apartment buildings, according to Harvey Sabinson, executive director of the League of American Theatres and Producers.

It may change the look outside, but will it change what happens inside the theaters? Not likely.

A revival of the only Somerset Maugham play that’s still done regularly 50 years after he deserted the theater? Another military trial play? Another revisionist look at Isadora Duncan? A further expose of big business cannibalizing the little guy?

Look again. “The mixture as before,” as a contemporary critic described Maugham’s work, can still hold a few surprises. In four out of five shows currently playing in Manhattan, sexual politics remain a fascinating and theatrically viable topic.

Maugham’s most revived play, “The Circle,” is receiving a smashing production at the Ambassador Theatre, and though one of its trio of stars, Rex Harrison, was not playing at the performance seen, the sparkle of Maugham’s dialogue still glows brightly. Understudy Louis Turenne (remember the starchy food critic in the film “Mystic Pizza”?) made a stylish, if somewhat tame, Lord Proteus, the “other man” who years ago ran off with the wife of Clive Champion-Cheney, M.P.

Without Harrison, “The Circle” is Glynis Johns’ show and she wends her way effervescently through Maugham’s slalom of epigrams, perfectly tuned to the period-perfect direction of Brian Murray. Stewart Granger is the deserted husband, a winning and surprisingly facile performance for an actor whose film roles made him look stodgier than he is on stage.

Maugham’s strong statements on sexual politics sound quite up-to-date. The play could be a lesson to today’s playwrights, giving the audience something to think about after the laughter has died away.

The conclusion of a marriage contract is only the witty and wise punch line to a sharp-edged comedy-drama currently selling out at Off-Broadway’s Minetta Lane Theatre for Jerry Sterner’s “Other People’s Money,” a play about a stock takeover of a “small-time big business.”

It’s a fine piece of stagecraft, turning the lead of business dealing into theater gold. Sterner writes dialogue (“The garment district’s too classy for you!”) like firecrackers going off.

Jon Polito gives a powerfully comic and unsettlingly empathetic performance as “Larry the Liquidator,” a Wall Street operator who’s made a crusade, and a bundle, out of taking over shaky concerns. But the smooth transition from angry attorney to cheerful money manipulator puts Priscilla Lopez’s performance at the core of the play’s impact. Sterner’s punch line makes his main point, with the marriage of the Liquidator and the lady lawyer, and their joy in their twin sons, named “Little Bull” and “Little Bear.” After the laughter fades, the happy ending reveals itself as a serious comment on some sad values floating around in today’s society.

On another level, more of those values are scathingly examined by the incomparable Eric Bogosian in his new one-man show at Off-Broadway’s Orpheum Theatre. “Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll” is pure Bogosian. Some of it may be a little thin, but there’s enough meat to chew on later and remind the viewer that Bogosian is a young man whose view of the decidedly kinky human condition is scalpel sharp and richly shaded.

A couple of vivid images stand out. One is Bogosian’s gentle and opaque aging British rock star who hasn’t worked in 10 years because he ditched the drug habit (“You’re having such a good time, you don’t realize what a bad time you’re having”) and lost his inspiration. Devastating satire laid on with kid gloves. Even more memorable is his New York macho tough recounting the disasters of a friend’s bachelor party. Bogosian couldn’t be more on target with this one, a roller-coaster ride through a night of misguided hysteria that keeps the groom from attending his own wedding--they had a “wild time, but next week, no girls !”

Bogosian can take a small incident and make it into something big, not unlike the way that Tom Hulce takes the central character in Aaron Sorkin’s “A Few Good Men,” at the Music Box, and makes the play about him rather than the tried and trite military trial around which the play revolves.

Hulce is Lt. (j.g.) Daniel Kaffee, son of a famous late trial lawyer, who’s been practicing law for six months in the Navy after his graduation from law school. He’s known for plea bargaining and settling out of court, and is terrified of trying to step into the shoes he’s inherited. Kaffee’s growth into becoming his own man, and Hulce’s expert, detailed examination of that growth, makes “A Few Good Men” worth sitting through the trial that causes Kaffee’s coming of age--another look at dissension in the ranks and a military cover-up of a Marine guard’s death at Guantanamo Bay.

Sorkin writes great dialogue that covers worn-out ground. Although Michael Dolan and Victor Love give affecting performances as the defendants, the trial in Cuba isn’t nearly as interesting as Kaffee’s odyssey into manhood and Hulce’s performance.

The play, coincidentally, was sold as a film before it came to Broadway, and that’s probably where it belongs. Its ideas are carbon copies, its jingoism and Marine boots stomping across the stage have a strong sense of deja vu . Don Scardino’s direction gives the evening what power it has, but Sorkin seems to have seen a lot of old films about military trials.

Marriage a la mode, at least a la Isadora Duncan (Elizabeth Ashley), is at the center of Martin Sherman’s new play, “When She Danced,” at Playwrights Horizons. It’s an odd little piece that’s totally hypnotic in its theatricality. We see Duncan in her twilight, married to her libidinous young Russian poet, cavorting with her Greek accompanist--a concert pianist--and wallowing through her days and nights in her Paris maison .

Duncan is always worth a glance and Sherman makes it an intriguing one. He also provides a role that’s right up Ashley’s alley. She gets to roll about on the floor and chew up a lot of Steve Rubin’s dead-on Paris flat setting. Duncan herself was not above a little scenery chewing.

Jonathan Walker’s Russian speaks no English, Robert Sean Leonard’s very funny tri-lingual Greek has to translate for Richard Levine’s Italian dinner guest, and Duncan’s equally amusing buddy Marcia Wallace has to translate for Clea Montville’s Swedish Duncan-clone. But the audience doesn’t need subtitles to know what’s going on. They’re a fine company, able to insinuate themselves into the dreamlike insanity of Sherman’s tone poem without a blink.

It’s always been entertainment that brings audiences into theaters. When that entertainment has something to say the audience is doubly rewarded. The mixture as before still works.