Edition: U.S. / Global

THEATER REVIEW; A Folksy Eccentric Who's Got a Secret

Published: April 9, 2004

Now this is what it means to work a room. In the opening moments of ''Match,'' the slim and soggy new comedy by Stephen Belber that opened last night at the Plymouth Theater, Frank Langella is utterly alone onstage. This is appropriate, since aloneness is a dominant shade in Mr. Langella's portrait of his character, an aging choreographer and dance teacher named Tobi Powell. But though there's not another soul in Tobi's apartment, he fills the space with the social energy of Le Cirque 2000 during a weekday lunch hour.

Whether curled catlike on his sofa while knitting what looks like an epic scarf-in-the-making, rushing from kitchen to living room with bowls of stale snack foods or pensively clipping his nails, Tobi somehow radiates the rabid conviviality of a man born to schmooze. And that's before the guests he's waiting for have even arrived. What's he going to be like when he has real people to play to?

By the time the play's two other cast members, Ray Liotta and Jane Adams, finally make their entrance, Mr. Langella has created a juicy, overripe character study that has the audience in the palms of Tobi's fluttering hands. Tobi is a fop of a very different order from the posturing, provincial Russian nobleman Mr. Langella portrayed (and won a Tony for) in Turgenev's ''Fortune's Fool'' two years ago. But for the show's first half-hour, he exhales the same breath of authenticity.

A convincingly contradictory mix of small-town American folksiness and aesthetic worldliness, Mr. Langella makes you feel, as only a fine actor can, that his character is both deeply familiar and original. You're ready to follow this manic, hopeful, charming and pathetic creature wherever he wants to take you. Wherever, in this case, turns out to be a narrow cul-de-sac. And it's a tribute to Mr. Langella's electricity and resourcefulness that you keep praying that Mr. Belber's schematic, soft-centered script will take some radical turn and surprise you.

As it is, this story of a solitary man forced to confront a long-buried secret is an itchy tease of a play that never truly delivers. It feels much too appropriate when it is revealed that none of the three characters have had sex in a long, long time. Though Mr. Langella, his co-stars and their light-handed director, Nicholas Martin, do their best to make you think otherwise, ''Match'' is all foreplay and no follow-through.

If it seems I'm being annoyingly elusive, that's because ''Match'' is set up as a mystery of sorts. And the play's hook into its audience is tenuous enough without my giving things away. Initially, it looks as if ''Match'' might be one of those satisfying old-fashioned puzzle plays, like ''Deathtrap'' or ''Sleuth,'' in which mutual deception and power shifts among a compact cast of characters keep an audience in comfortable suspense for a couple of hours.

Mike and Lisa Davis (Mr. Liotta and Ms. Adams), a homey-looking couple from Seattle, have come to New York specifically to interview Tobi in his apartment in the Inwood section of Manhattan, way, way uptown. (James Noone's shabby, cluttered set is a choice example of décor as character definition.)

Their pretext is that Lisa is researching a book about ''the history of classical dance choreography.'' Though Tobi, now a teacher at Juilliard, is glad of the company, he isn't quite sure where he fits in, since he has lived much of his adult life abroad, and most of his work has been for opera, a form in which dance is secondary.

He's right to be suspicious. That these visitors are not what they seem is all too evident in Mike's combustible discomfort and Lisa's anxiety as her husband veers toward explosion. The air is charged -- well, on a very low current -- with sexual tension and suppressed violence. And as the couple's questions become more and more personal, Tobi is compelled to insist that they shut off that darn tape recorder and explain what they're really up to.

Mr. Belber has been this way before. His best-known previous play is called ''Tape.'' (It was made into a well-received movie by Richard Linklater three years ago starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard.) It, too, is a monosyllabically titled three-character work in which a tape recorder is used to explore secrets and lies from the past.

But while ''Tape,'' according to most descriptions, had some of that sharp, corrosive nastiness that passes for cool, ''Match'' is warm-hearted and forgiving. These are virtuous traits, and they are appealingly manifested in Mr. Belber's obvious affection for Tobi and, to a lesser extent, the Davises. But this same sweetness is applied with machinery-jamming stickiness to the reversals of plot. Call me cynical, but my heart sank when it became clear that ''Match'' was going to abandon the sinister for the sentimental, substituting coziness for complexity of character.

Mr. Liotta, a compelling surly bad boy in films like ''Goodfellas'' and ''Something Wild,'' doesn't have much to work with for his Broadway debut. Mike, who is absent for much of the second act, is most notable for being ill at ease, a trait that Mr. Liotta has no difficulty in conveying here. Ms. Adams, who can be seen on screen in the current ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,'' has a wonderful gift for anxiously and spontaneously twisting a line.

Her low-key quirkiness as Lisa nicely sets off Tobi's florid eccentricities. And she and Mr. Langella are so good at conveying loneliness, in their different but complementary styles, that they almost justify an outrageously prurient scene in which Tobi makes gentle but very explicit sexual overtures to Lisa. (Oops, I've just given away one of the show's secrets: Tobi isn't just the old queen he's accused of being.)

As for Mr. Langella, he makes Tobi such a vital and ingratiating presence that he keeps you hoping he'll be allowed to take his character into less conventional territory. A compulsive chatterer, Tobi tends to smooth over social awkwardness and gaping silences with feverishly told, amusing ancedotes.

He invests such energy in these stories that whether they're really funny or not, you do your best to believe they are. That sense of a vivacious host keeping a dying cocktail party alive is not unlike Mr. Langella's relation to ''Match.'' Despite his unflagging inventiveness, the party is long over before the play ends.


By Stephen Belber; directed by Nicholas Martin; sets by James Noone; costumes by Michael Krass; lighting by Brian MacDevitt; sound by Kurt Kellenberger and Jerry Yager; production supervisor, Kai Brothers; production stage manager, Andrea (Spook) Testani; associate producers, Clint Bond Jr. and Edward Nelson. Presented by the Araca Group, East of Doheny Theatricals, Chase Mishkin, in association with Ray and Kit Sawyer and Carol Grose. At the Plymouth Theater, 236 West 45th Street, Manhattan.

WITH: Frank Langella (Tobi), Ray Liotta (Mike) and Jane Adams (Lisa).

Photos: Frank Langella, left, and Ray Liotta in the play ''Match,'' at the Plymouth Theater. (Photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)(pg. E1); Jane Adams and Frank Langella in Stephen Belber's ''Match.'' (Photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)(pg. E4)