A Sex Role About-Face : Rick Edelstein, a self-described typical Bronx male, writes and directs a play that praises women and disparages men

“They talk about left brain, right brain,” says the mother-in-law in “Sexual Serendipity.” “Not with men. They have a front brain and a back brain. The front brain is their penis; the back brain is their Mommy.”

What? Another feminist play trashing the male image? Well, why not? Especially when the strongest voice in the play, the aforementioned mother-in-law, is the voice of writer-director Rick Edelstein, who describes himself as very much a typical “Bronx male.”

Considering his macho New York street background, Edelstein has decidedly unusual ideas about which sex is supreme, ideas that run through his new decidedly realistic play, with comedic elements, which was scheduled to open Saturday night at the Odyssey Theatre.

Edelstein has written other plays but is known best for his film and television work: as a writer for TV’s “Starsky & Hutch,” “Charlie’s Angels” and many more; as a director for “Starsky,” “Marcus Welby MD” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Maude” and others. He also has directed Shelley Winters in “Sweet Bird of Youth” and is a published novelist.

But all this was after growing up in the man’s world of the Bronx. However, according to Edelstein, it wasn’t quite that way.

“I was brought up by eight aunts and a mother,” he says. “Now I have five daughters. My whole life has been surrounded by women. But the Bronx is a very male borough, so I also had a whole bunch of male bonding.”

He made up his mind about female supremacy early on. “I’m convinced that women are the advanced gender. Women’s basic instinct is to nurture,” he says. “Possibly that comes from the fact that they can do the only miracle that still exists--bear life. It’s not environmentally conditioned. It’s in our code.”

When Edelstein became successful in the television industry, he had no doubt that women would find their rightful place in that world. “As a writer-director in television,” he says, “I used to romanticize that when women got into executive positions it would be a more gentle kind of business, and it wasn’t. Women had to integrate into our burning house and become as tough as the men. I would love for women to get power in politics, and keep the things that make us different, that nurturing, giving, enduring quality, with their brains and their smarts.”

“Sexual Serendipity” spells out some of Edelstein’s concerns about the battle of the genders. It’s about a man in his early 30s who wakes up and realizes he hasn’t lived an original moment. He’s successful, has done everything appropriate to the American Dream, but he hasn’t lived an original moment. He goes out in search of the infamous it.

Back in the 1960s, because of Edelstein’s street background, film director Shirley Clark asked him to help cast the young people for her film “A Cool World.” One of those kids is still taking the journey Edelstein started him on, and plays what he calls a “libidinous divorce lawyer” in “Serendipity.”

Antonio Fargas is remembered as the colorful and funny Huggy Bear in the TV series “Starsky & Hutch.” He hasn’t forgotten those years, after “A Cool World,” when Edelstein, under a government grant, offered Harlem kids $30 a week to work toward being actors, writers and directors. It was an incentive not unlike today’s pay-to-read programs that get kids into the world of books.

“Rick offered us $30 to be in the program,” Fargas recalls, “and that was wonderful. It was right after the Civil Rights Act, and they were trying to keep the summers calm in New York.”

Fargas sees similarities between that world and today’s world. “Out of the burning in L.A.,” he continues, “you’re going to find the same kind of opportunities for artists. The talent that’s displayed in just the commercialism of rap music shows there is an instinctive, natural ability, and innocence, in people who have had no training at all, that lends itself to theater, to performing.”

From a completely different background comes Ksenia Prohaska, the actress who plays the all-knowing mother-in-law in “Serendipity.” Prohaska was born and reared in Communist Croatia and received solid, state-funded training in theater before leaving six years ago.

“When Rick first asked me to play this role,” she said, with a broad smile playing across her very beautiful face, “he said this is a woman who’s 50 years old! I was really upset.” She’s done many films, including “Bugsy Siegel” and “Tipperary” in Hollywood, starred in numerous Yugoslav TV series and in over 25 stage productions in Yugoslavia, but this is her American theater debut.

“My first American play,” said the 30ish actress with a laugh, “a 50-year-old woman. To play 70, it’s easy, but to play 50, it’s such a little difference. Cher is 46. How are you going to play a woman like that? Then I overcame my vanity and called him back.”

One of the things that changed her mind was the attitude of the play toward men, which included the mother-in-law being what Edelstein calls “the author’s voice, the great third eye, the voice in awakening the daughter to the truths about the differences between men and women.”

Prohaska admits that her character “says so many things that make it easy to play.” And Rick allowed her to make mention in the script of the current troubles in her homeland.

“That’s one thing I’m thankful to Rick for. Today it’s all over the news, the terrible truth about what’s happening in my old country, Croatia. There are thousands and thousands of people in prison and concentration camps, led by the Serbian Communist government. Croatia gave me beautiful schooling; wonderful people led me through my first years of being an artist, and I’m really proud of it. Now that country is devastated by war.”

At the end of “Sexual Serendipity,” Prohaska recalls, “Mama says, ‘Me, I’m on the side of people who are hurt, and against those who do the hurting.’ ”