THEATER BEAT : Affectionate View of Carny Life

Life in a carny tent show has its own tone and flavor. Susan Hayden’s “Tent Show,” at the Met Theatre, is redolent of that flavor. Few writers have so well captured the laid-back desperation, the acceptance of failure.

Lucky (Tom Bower) is a magician, confined to a wheelchair since the same auto accident that killed his wife. He’s sharing a room with Estelle Del Monte (O-Lan Jones), who admits “infidelity runs in my family, it’s a genetic thing.” The appearance of Estelle’s randy, self-centered ex-lover Vaughn (Arliss Howard) hardly causes a bump in the path of Lucky’s September-May relationship with Estelle.

As a matter of fact, there are few bumps at all in Hayden’s script. It paints a realistic, emotionally involving picture of the trio, and their empty lives, but never rises to dramatic intensity in spite of Alan Vint’s understanding, affectionate direction. The playing out of the action is there, then almost surreptitiously it’s over. No emotional hurdle has been jumped, no dramatic walls broken through.

Jones shines as the floozy with a heart of pink Jell-O; Howard’s kinetic, physical performance is striking, as is Bower’s kindly old loser of a trickster. But like the tinsel outside the tent, their sparkle gives the lie to what’s awaiting inside.

“Tent Show,” Met Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends March 20. $7.50; (213) 957-1831. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.