STAGE REVIEW : Conway Cashes In on ‘Other People’s Money’ : The director and star provides provocative, acerbic and hilarious comment on the greed of the ‘80s.

Can a ruthless, doughnut-eating, three-pack-a-day, short-of-breath ball of blubber with dollar signs on the brain turn into a someone you hate to love? That is one of the questions at the center of Jerry Sterner’s “Other People’s Money,” which opened Sunday at the Pasadena Playhouse in a production directed by and starring--the word applies--Kevin Conway.

Conway did not create the role of Lawrence Garfinkle described above, but he is the actor whose performance put “Other People’s Money” on the Off Broadway map.

In Conway’s hands, Sterner’s play becomes a provocative, acerbic and hilarious comment on the greed of the ‘80s--or as Garfinkle puts it, on how “we went from ‘Ask not what your country can do for you’ to ‘What’s in it for me?’ ” And it is not, as a couple of climactic second-act speeches confirm, without its moral underpinnings. What is unexpected is whose morality emerges strongest.

Takeover artist Garfinkle feels about making money the way playwright Jerry Sterner feels about making plays: It’s the greatest game there is. For Sterner, the game is writing a crackerjack comedy on a topic whose currency was traded daily on Wall Street in the 1980s. For “Larry the Liquidator” Garfinkle, the game is accumulating dollars for their own sake--the thrills and spills involved. What thrills? Whose spills? Guess.

Garfinkle has his sights set on a small New England wire and cable company that is withering on the vine. The owner is Andrew Jorgenson (John Anderson), an upstanding, short-sighted gentleman of the old school who believes in running the 73-year-old family factory with a debt-free, firmly paternalistic hand.

He can do no wrong in the eyes of his assistant and longtime mistress Bea Sullivan (Georgann Johnson). But his younger, more aggressive--and opportunistic--manager, Christopher Curry (William Coles) warns of the coming storm, only to be ignored.

When Garfinkle strikes and they find themselves in the eye of the hurricane, they turn to Bea’s New York lawyer-daughter Kate for help. The attractive Kate (Margaret Reed), whose feelings about Jorgenson don’t match her mother’s, finds herself in a bind. She faces a coveted opportunity to make a name for herself by taking on one of the biggest sharks on Wall Street, but for the sake of a man she doesn’t relish saving.

True to the spirit of the ‘80s, selfishness wins out, Kate takes the case, and thereby hangs one of modern theater’s most unexpected skirmishes of the sexes, fought entirely on legal grounds, in terms of white knights and tender offers. Never has financialese sounded so seductive. Never has the jargon of Wall Street (where Sterner worked for many years) been put in such witty service of an improbable, thumpingly entertaining ritual courtship.

Conway’s performance as the fat man with a steel-trap mind and a grip of platinum is even more impressive than it was in New York, enhanced by the very strong showing that Reed, in a stylish array of executive suits (designed by Reve Richards), makes as the supersmart Kate.

Everything else pales by comparison, especially Anderson who is unnecessarily superficial as the ineffectual Jorgenson. Coles, on the other hand, is just weasely and self-interested enough as the well-named Curry, and Johnson slavish enough in her devotion to the stuffy Jorgenson. They are, however, in no uncertain terms, supporting players in a high-gear duet for much heavier hitters with a real aptitude for the fray.

The fray is all the fun.

Deborah Raymond’s well-engineered two-locale set and Martin Aronstein’s lights provide the context for these dueling points of view. But it is Conway’s brilliance in the pivotal role that elevates Sterner’s well-made play, full of lip-smacking one-liners, from the mundanely clever to the must-see.

In addition to the powerful case Sterner makes for the inevitability of change, this production of “Other People’s Money” makes a pretty convincing one for the transforming power of good actors in good roles. Conway and Reed are nothing less than living proof.

* “Other People’s Money,” Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends April 28. $29. (818) 356-PLAY). Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.