STAGE REVIEW : Chronicles of an Angry Writer in ‘and’

Roger Rosenblatt’s one-person play “and” begins and ends with a reaction. As the lights come up at the Hollywood Playhouse (something they do rarely at this underused venue), Rosenblatt’s hibernating writer re-creates for us his assorted negative responses to people who sidle up to him at cocktail parties and gush over how much they love his work .

Ninety minutes later, the writer, played with unabashed elitism by Ron Silver, hears the same words from an editor--and has a somewhat different reaction.

But back to the beginning.

Who are these fawning cocktail party gushers who adore his stuff? Gnats. Gadflies of the ‘90s. People, Silver tells us, whose vocabulary favors awesome and dysfunctional , whose lives are defined by the personal trainers they retain, the cellular phones they keep, the correct causes they embrace. People who are so insistently there for you that he can’t get rid of them, try as he may. Unless he shoots them.

The play--if it can be called a play--plunges headlong into a mock trial for such murderous behavior, with some pretty funny explanations offered to the imaginary judge. Surely “and” is a piece of and for our time.

But it is also slightly unexpected of Rosenblatt, whose essays, on the “MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour” at least, betray a mind more tempered with irony. His writer here is very, very, very angry, and his “and” is more a diatribe than a play.

Silver is indeed quicksilver as the well-heeled scribe, and as cutting as a pack of razor blades.

His book-lined stage apartment--handsomely designed and lit by Russell Pyle--is decidedly upscale. The floor-to-ceiling books sit in walnut shelves or something equally rich. He may be hibernating, but not in a garret.

He keeps a large television set, an automatic coffee maker, a phone and a list of takeout restaurants that presumably deliver.

If this man suffers, it’s because among such measurable creature comforts, he is nurturing a large grudge against a world that has given him three major irritants among smaller ones: an ex-wife who is a carbuncle on his soul, an editor who has made the mistake of rejecting one of his pieces and a journalistic career, when what he really wants to be (doesn’t everyone?) is a “serious writer.”

Well, the world hath no greater fury than a writer scorned. How, then, beset as he is by fools and having a crisis of confidence, can he forgive those lesser mortals for loving his work when he himself hates it, for the moment?

Funny stuff, quite worthy of Moliere or Congreve, that would be a lot funnier were it spooned out with a much healthier dose of its obvious ironies. They are implicit in the rantings of a journalist scorned by his editor, harboring delusions of grandeur, hoarding his injuries like toys and behaving just as badly as those ordinary beings who have committed the unpardonable sin, not of loving his work, but of being the wrong people to love his work--the “uglifiers, stupefiers, democratizers, cheats, dopes and public confessors” who add insult by being “incredibly supportive.”

Where “and” turns sour is in the degree of seriousness with which it takes itself. Was it director D. Paul Thomas’ decision to play it so laden with anger? Is it the way Rosenblatt wanted it? Is it Silver’s choice? All/none of the above?

Wherever that decision rests, it feels wrong. Silver’s attitude as the writer is so abrasive and arrogant that it blunts “and’s” satirical edge, despite the sharp intelligence of the performance. This isn’t a guy you love to hate, just a guy who’s unpleasant. It is as if we are denied permission to laugh at him and fully savor the richness of the humor that is undeniably there.

Taken that solemnly, the bitterness in Rosenblatt’s writing contributes to its own diminution. It is one thing to indict, another to carp. And Silver comes off as an actor you admire more than you enjoy. But “and” greatly redeems itself in the end with some large, splendid passages about the creative fire. They quote Jean Cocteau, seize on some Kafkaesque counter-images and even indulge in some jocular word-play (“Pirandello, lucky fellow; de Maupassant, lucky Guy”).

It is sophisticated and, yes, elitist entertainment largely for the initiated. The ultimate joke is on the writer, of course, which is where it needs to be from the beginning. “and” ends in a flurry of potent images and ideas that its less prepossessing and slower start did not presage: a man coming to terms with himself, grieving for the person he once was, reconnecting with the dream.

That is “and” at its finest.

Now if we could just get everyone to relax a little sooner about some of the rest . . .

“and,” Hollywood Playhouse, 1445 N. Las Palmas, Hollywood. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends June 28, $25-$28; (213) 480-3232. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Ron Silver The writer

Producer Deborah S. Thomas. Director D. Paul Thomas. Playwright Roger Rosenblatt. Set and lights Russell Pyle. Production stage manager Lloyd Davis Jr.