Why They Might Have Said ‘I Don’t’

“Five years ago, I noticed I was entering the wedding part of my life,” recalled Douglas McGrath. “Every summer I went to reams of them--often as a member of the wedding. There were two, especially, where I thought, ‘Nope, no way. You two, back to your corners.’ It was obvious they weren’t going to make it. And both of them were close friends. I thought, ‘If I think this is wrong, don’t I have an obligation to say something?’ ”

That dilemma is the basis for “The Big Day,” the comedy-of-marital-errors making its premiere today at the Pasadena Playhouse, with Ralph Bruneau and Helen Slater playing the newlyweds. “The circumstance is real, but that’s as far as it goes,” said the playwright, 32, protecting his real-life friends--and the play’s “surprise” ending. When the New York-based McGrath began to venture his opinion to one of the couples, “they were quite uninterested in my advice,” he recalled, “so I kept my mouth shut . . . and wrote this play.”

An English major at Princeton (“They have an embarrassed theater department”), the Texas native struck it lucky the summer after graduation, landing a writing job on “Saturday Night Live.” Yet he lasted only one year: “I was tired as could be. Always writing, rewriting, rehearsing with the cast.” Nowadays, McGrath writes a column for The Nation, “White House Diary” (the fictional diary of a high-level Bush staffer), and has written a pilot for Showtime with comedian Steven Wright.

Meanwhile, he’s got big dreams for “The Big Day.” “I hope anyone who’s considering marrying the wrong person comes,” the playwright quipped. “I’d like to send all the happy people home unhappy.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Charles Busch’s Off Broadway hit, the campy “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom,” is currently playing at the Coronet Theatre--with the author on hand in several female roles.

The Times’ Sylvie Drake found characters “in search of excuses for great get-ups and off-color jokes . . . Not for all markets, but certainly for certain markets. Rarely has a show been better suited to the dingy, dark, mildly decadent ambience of the Coronet.”

From Steven Mikulan in the L.A. Weekly: “There’s not much more beyond this simple, extended comedy sketch, but its charm is in the fusion of Julie Halston and Busch’s performances, Brian T. Whitehill’s wryly austere set and John Glaser’s garish costumes.”

The Reader’s Clifford Gallo cheered “high camp, wicked wit and hilarious excess . . . The side-splitting spoof follows the undead from ancient Sodom to 1920s Hollywood, where the ever-arch Busch and his sensational company cast a spell that is simultaneously silly, satiric and always funny.”

Warned Drama-Logue’s Polly Warfield: “Those who expect something sharp, bitchy and really raunchy may be discombobulated. What they get is literate satire and parody that pinks its targets with perfumed darts, not poisoned arrows. (It) has a good heart, a gentle nature and wouldn’t hurt a fly.”