New York

It occasionally amuses me to pose as a rabid Anglophobe, but in fact I like British drama as much as the next theatergoer -- when it's good. Alan Ayckbourn's "Private Fears in Public Places," for instance, is one of the best new plays I've been lucky enough to review in this space. It approaches perfection. So does the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Euripides' "Hecuba," only from the wrong direction: It's perfectly awful.

Mr. Ayckbourn's entry in the "Brits Off Broadway" festival currently under way at 59E59 Theaters is a more or less typical piece of Ayckbournian plot-juggling in which the lives of six lonely Londoners are made to intersect in a variety of unpredictable ways, some funny and others desperately sad. I can't come any closer to describing the effect of "Private Fears in Public Places" than to say that it suggests Terence Rattigan revised by David Ives. Written in 54 crisp scenes (some of them wordless) and acted on a small stage divided into five playing areas, it moves with whirligig speed, glittering craftsmanship and an exhilarating dash of craziness, and when it's over you won't quite know how you feel, other than thoroughly entertained.

A Finely Tuned Ensemble

Mr. Ayckbourn has brought to the U.S. for the first time his own Yorkshire-based Stephen Joseph Theatre, six of whose members he has directed in this production. Each is so good that I wouldn't dream of singling out any one of them for separate praise. They work together like a freshly tuned V-6 engine. As for the play itself, I can see how a superficial viewer might mistake it for a piece of commercial work. Don't be deceived by the shiny surface of "Private Fears in Public Places," though: It's as serious as a broken heart.

"Hecuba" is serious, too, but Tony Harrison, the translator, decided that Euripides' ever-modern Trojan War tale of slavery and vengeance was in need of updating. I bet you can see the punch line coming: He's set the whole thing in Iraq, jerking around the original Greek in order to make it more "relevant." (Among other overbearingly vulgar touches, he's rendered "the army of Hellas" as "the coalition force.") The set consists of five tiers of olive-drab American-style tents, the enslaved Trojan women are dressed in Muslim-style garb and sing Arabic-style chants, the sound effects...oh, the hell with it. I'll let Mr. Harrison explain the rest in his own words: "The audience might weep for Hecuba in Washington when the tragedy plays there, but will they squirm with regret for Iraq, or the re-election of George Bush, or pause a moment before going for the gullet of Iran?" That's what I call subtle.

Even a fatuously tendentious "adaptation" of a classic can be ennobled by a great production, but this isn't that. Mr. Harrison, whom I take to be responsible for the staging (no director is credited in the printed program), has no gift whatsoever for moving performers around in a visually interesting way, while Vanessa Redgrave's twitchy Hecuba is at once overacted and underprojected. Yes, there's a fair amount of fine acting to be seen on the stage of the BAM Opera House, but Mr. Harrison is so afraid to let the audience draw its own conclusions that he hangs his interpretation in front of the cast like an asbestos fire curtain, thereby rendering the play invisible.

Private Fears In Public Places
59E59 Theaters
59 E. 59th St. ($45),
212-279-4200, closes July 3
Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Ave. ($30-$85),
718-636-4100, closes Sunday
Lady Windermere's Fan
The Shakespeare Theatre
450 Seventh St. NW, Washington ($12.75-$68),
202-547-1122/877-487-8849, closes July 31

I'm not opposed in principle to modernized versions of the classics, even in politically charged interpretations, so long as they aren't so obvious that you groan out loud. Mr. Harrison's "Hecuba" flunks that test. As I watched, I felt as though he were sitting next to me, constantly digging a sharp elbow into my ribs and hissing, "Get it? Get it? Get it?" Believe me, Mr. Harrison, I get it: Bush lied, Euripides died.

* * *


The Shakespeare Theatre is putting on a production of Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan" with which only one thing is wrong: The pacing, especially in the first act, is a trifle slow. If the actors would tighten the screws a half-turn and knock five minutes off the running time, I wouldn't have a single nit to pick. Dixie Carter is devastatingly sexy as Mrs. Erlynne, the Lady in Red whose deep, dark secret sets the plot in motion, and everyone else in the almost-all-American cast supports her with the utmost aplomb, flinging epigrams into the breeze like lit firecrackers.

Keith Baxter, the director, has opted for a traditional interpretation -- Wilde's Victorian melodramatics are played straight -- and Simon Higlett's three big-budget sets are nothing short of scrumptious. No doubt Mois&eacute;s Kaufman's "Windermere," which runs July 6-17 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, will be "edgier" and more "contemporary," but I can't see how it could be better. If you found the Roundabout Theatre's current revival of Somerset Maugham's faux-Wildean "The Constant Wife" to be tedious, go to Washington and revel in the real right thing.

I'm a kid at heart when it comes to fancy scene changes, and this production contains an absolute stunner: The curtain falls on the morning room of Windermere House, and exactly 36 seconds later it rises on the reception room. No noise, no fuss, just poof! and you're there. I'd have gladly paid at least $12.75 to stand backstage and watch.
