New York

Not long after launching this column, I coined the Drama Critic's Prayer: Dear God, if it can't be good, let it be short. In fact, today's playwrights are well aware of the shrunken attention spans of TV-conditioned playgoers, and so their plays are growing shorter by the season. I don't have a problem with that -- I like artists who stick to the point, assuming they have one -- but the Signature Theatre Company's revival of "Two Trains Running," August Wilson's 1990 play, is anything but boring even though it runs for three hours and 10 minutes. If I hadn't checked, I would have taken for granted that it clocked in at two hours and change.

What makes "Two Trains Running" so engrossing? It's not the plot, because there isn't one. All Wilson does is put his characters in a rundown Pittsburgh diner and set them to mulling over past misfortunes and present frustrations, swapping stories in the time-honored manner of working-class people who can afford no amusement but conversation. The time is 1969, and political implications are scattered throughout this snapshot of a ghetto neighborhood gone to seed, but Wilson never forces them on you. Like all great artists, he trusts you to connect the dots.

So where's the magic? It lies above all in Wilson's belief in the beauty of everyday speech. "When I first started writing plays," he once said, "I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them." Yet there's plenty of art in it, too, for Wilson subtly heightened his characters' talk, molding it into arias and ensembles full of verbal music: "I was born with seven cents. My mama swallowed a nickel and two pennies and I come out with the nickel in one hand and the two pennies in the other. They say I was born with luck but they didn't say what kind. I think it was bad luck. What you think?" What a joy it must be to speak such lines -- and how sweetly these splendid actors speak them!


Signature Theatre Company,
Peter Norton Space, 55 W. 42nd St.
($15 through Dec. 30, then $55), 212-244-7529,
Closes Jan. 14

Imperial Theatre, 249 W. 45th St.
($41.25-$111.25), 212-239-6200/800-432-7250

Lou Bellamy, who runs the Penumbra Theatre of St. Paul, Minn., has staged "Two Trains Running" with undemonstrative simplicity, giving his cast plenty of room to lift Wilson's words off the page and set them spinning in the air. Derek McLane, the designer, has conjured up a diner that is believable in every dingy detail, from the battered Seeburg jukebox to the institutional-size jars of pickles and mayonnaise on the kitchen shelves. You can even see the steam rising from the bowls of beans dished up by January Lavoy, who plays Risa, the slow-moving, impenetrably resentful waitress around whom "Two Trains Running" revolves.

Naturalistic theater is tricky to pull off, for the slightest rip in the fabric of plausibility can cause the whole show to unravel. Not here. You believe everything you see and hear in "Two Trains Running," and you cling to every word.

* * *

Stephen Frears's film version of "High Fidelity" is on my Top Five list of good movies based on good books, in between "Strangers on a Train" and "Out of Sight." (I actually prefer it to Nick Hornby's novel.) The script is smart, the cast impeccable. What's not to like? Nothing -- so why turn it into a musical? Alas, the producers of "High Fidelity" came to a different conclusion, and now seem likely to lose their shirts.

The sad thing about "High Fidelity" is that it isn't half bad. In fact, some of it is quite good, starting with Amanda Green's lyrics. She is a master of the craft of packing everything you need to know about a character into a neatly wrapped, deftly rhymed package: "It may start out butterflies and bows,/But once the blush is off the rose/And the girl fin'lly figures out that you'll never propose -- /She goes!" Also impressive are Walter Bobbie's zippy staging and Anna Louizos's quick-change sets (she manages to turn a bedroom into a record store in two seconds flat).

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about David Lindsay-Abaire's book and Tom Kitt's rock-'n'-roll score. Mr. Kitt in particular is faced with an insoluble problem, for Mr. Hornby's novel is full of references to famous pop songs, many of which are heard in the film version. How do you write new songs as memorable as the hits they're meant to evoke? In Mr. Kitt's case, you don't: His music is well-made but undistinctive, and the pit band plays it so loudly that it's sometimes difficult to make out Ms. Green's lyrics. As for Mr. Lindsay-Abaire's book, it tracks the "High Fidelity" screenplay closely but not literally, meaning that you wait in vain to hear most of your favorite punch lines.

Some of these problems might have been overcome by a stronger cast, but the unfamiliar faces taking up space on the stage of the Imperial Theatre are bland TV-type actors who mostly do their best to remind you of John Cusack, Jack Black, Tim Robbins, Todd Louiso and Lisa Bonet. And that's what's wrong with "High Fidelity": It's good enough to make you want to go home and watch the movie again -- but no better.
