Edition: U.S. / Global

THEATER REVIEW; More Banter, Please, and Pass the Emotional Indigestion

Published: July 11, 2001

The dinner party at the center of ''Blue Window,'' Craig Lucas's achy comedy from 1984, is a deliciously credible rendition of a well-meaning disaster, the sort of oil-and-water gathering that many New Yorkers will recognize and hope never to attend again. In the discomfiting but finally touching revival of the play that opened yesterday at the 28th Street Theater and was directed by Julia Gibson, the result for the audience is a ''there but for the grace of God go I'' experience.

In the event that signals the tone of the show, just before the guests arrive, Libby, our hostess, suffers a misfortune that is as hilarious as it is humiliating, and watching her cope with it during the party makes you giggle with heartbreak. The provenance of the guest list is a mystery from the beginning, though it becomes evident that Libby (an endearing Marin Hinkle), a nervous, fragile-seeming woman, has a grief that is somehow connected to her motivation for giving the party.

Most of the guests do not know one another, and though there is not any particular reason that things go grim, everybody's social timing is off and all the individual temperaments run askew. As one person tries to explain the genius of the avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor, others respond by initiating a discussion about Topo Gigio, the Italian puppet-mouse who used to beg Ed Sullivan for a good-night kiss. One guest's jokey confession of his lack of sophistication -- ''I don't read and I'm proud of it'' -- is a squirmer; another guest, after all, is a novelist. A shy woman, asked courteously about herself, looks at the eyes turned her way and says, painfully, ''I feel like I'm on 'The Merv Griffin Show.' ''

On the one hand you sympathize with the decent and generally personable characters -- seven 30-ish folks, including one lesbian couple, one heterosexual couple, two single men and Libby, whose inner loneliness the play is bent on exposing. On the other, you're dying to escape from the sour chemistry they create in Libby's apartment. The play has three scenes -- before, during and after the dinner party -- and as it opens the theatrical illusion is that the prospective partyers are all in their own homes, even though the actors are physically posted in different corners of Libby's Ikea-furnished living room.

It is an engagingly jazzy beginning. Boo (Marcia DeBonis), a family therapist, is listening to Italian language tapes while her lover, Alice (Hope Chernov), the novelist who fears, correctly, that she is an intellectual impostor, is fluttering about making a pest of herself, insecurely seeking affection. The musician, Tom (Josh Stamberg), is composing a song on his guitar and asking the opinion of his morose, distracted girlfriend, a secretary named Emily (Katy Hansz). Norbert (Jason Kolotouros), who teaches sky diving, is playing Scrabble with himself, and Griever (Neal Huff), a slight, glib fellow who may be an actor (he practices an awards-acceptance speech into a mirror, using the hair dryer as a microphone) is dressing and taking panicked phone calls from Libby.

That they are all occupying Libby's space is a meaningful illusion -- in Randall Parsons's set the apartment has bluish-white walls and a long, horizontal window at the rear that gives the impression of looking out over the horizon. Despite the characters' outward differences, they all turn out to be in the same existential boat, an intention of the playwright that is underscored by their often speaking at the same time, rendering each of their plaintive voices indistinguishable in the overall cacophony.

If that sounds a little annoying and heavy-handed, it is; the play does have its weighty pretensions. The characters do, too. Though several are proprietarily expert about this or that, nobody is a genius here. Alice the novelist, for example, does not know what empirical means and at one point insists absurdly that ''ideas do not come across in pictures.'' But the rendering of yearning-but-ordinary intellect is Mr. Lucas's significant achievement here, and indeed not just the writing, but the direction and the performances in this production are geared toward the notion that deep, secret disappointment and occasional self-pity are not only understandable, they are inevitably human.

At one point, Emily steps out of the narrative reality to sing a haunting, autobiographical song. It is quite theatrically surprising, and Ms. Hansz, in a voice that is forceful as a tantrum and tender as a bruise, makes it work as a kind of anthem of helplessness.

All the actors are good, each with a clear idea of his or her character. Ms. Chernov makes Alice irritatingly blabby but with a birdlike fear of being harmed; Ms. DeBonis is particularly good as a cheerfully giddy drunk unaware that she is embarrassing herself just a bit; and Mr. Huff gives Griever a persuasive split personality: graceless in company, yet caring and sweet with his friend and group-therapy buddy, Libby.

To the playwright's credit, the awful source of Libby's anguish is perfectly believable and completely unguessable. Her past is known by only two guests, and it is revealed only in the final few minutes, when she tells her story to Norbert, the quietest guest and the last to leave. Not terribly articulate, he turns out to have a deep well of kindness.

As for the others, the discomfort of the evening clings to them, and when we last see them in their own homes, they appear to have been gouged by the experience. And even though Mr. Lucas's prose goes overly poetic in the codalike final moments as he tries to explain his title, the idea that life is a party has rarely felt so double-edged.


By Craig Lucas; directed by Julia Gibson; sets by Randall Parsons; lighting by Josh Bradford; costumes by Kay Grunder; original music by Rob Kaplowitz; sound by Kathy Queen and Mr. Kaplowitz; technical supervisor, Jon Allaire; production stage manager, Karyn Meek; general manager, Michael Rafael. Presented by Barbara-Ann O'Connor, Mr. Rafael and Cellar Door Productions. At the 28th Street Theater, 120 West 28th Street, Chelsea.

WITH: Hope Chernov (Alice), Marcia DeBonis (Boo), Katy Hansz (Emily), Marin Hinkle (Libby), Neal Huff (Griever), Jason Kolotouros (Norbert) and Josh Stamberg (Tom).

Photo: Marin Hinkle as Libby, the host of a dinner party in ''Blue Window.'' (Erin Wile/''Blue Window'')(pg. E3)