Arts & Leisure

By JEREMY GERARD

Arts & Leisure (Playwrights Horizon, New York; 142 seats; $ 35) A Playwrights Horizons presentation of a play in one act by Steve Tesich. Directed by JoAnne Akalaitis.
 
Cast: Harris Yulin (Alex Chaney), Randy Danson (Maria), Mary Diveny (Mother), Frances Conroy (Lenore), Elizabeth Marvel (Daughter). Playwrights perpetrate lots of fantasies and conspiracy theories about critics, their perceived mortal enemies: Critics are idiots, they're creative wannabes, they operate as a cabal, they're soulless creatures happiest when inflicting the greatest possible pain. Of course, most critics think the same things about one another, though they tend to keep such thoughts to themselves. Playwrights, on the other hand, have a long tradition of biting the hand that bleeds them, usually ending up looking petulant at best, paranoid at worst.
 

So here is Steve Tesich's "Arts & Leisure," a title that suggests it will have something to do with the New York Times, but whose less-specific target is a syndicated drama critic who is thoughtful to a fault.

Alex Chaney (Harris Yulin) makes the rather banal observation that "defining what drama is has become the single most dramatic question of our time," noting how soon we tire of real-life tragedy.

The plight of the Kurds, he reminds us several times throughout the brief evening, is an example of this phenomenon, making everyone "citizen drama critics" in a time when all the world is, yes, a stage.

Alex is a monster, all that thoughtfulness having resulted in a pathological disengagement responsible for his mother's despair, his ex-wife's madness and his daughter's emotional vagrancy.

Though Alex is not impervious to their unhappiness, he is immune to it: His mother's account of a father dying in horrible agony fails to move him, and when his daughter spits, "Just the thought of you is enough to make me miscarry," his face remains blank.

Perhaps most tellingly, when Lenore (Frances Conroy), the ex-wife and a former actress, shows up drunk and practically deranged, she describes his harrowing treatment of her -- always the critic, even in bed -- and then exonerates him, calling him the most scrupulous man she has ever known: "You would never dream of killing something in someone else that you hadn't first killed in yourself."

JoAnne Akalaitis' accomplished production with a sterling cast pulls off something for which this director is not best known: It undersells Alex's horridness and thus throws it into high relief.

The women -- in addition to Conroy, they are Mary Diveny as the mother, Elizabeth Marvel as the daughter and Randy Danson as the housekeeper Alex describes as his "conscience"-- do the dirty business of showing what a nasty piece of work Alex is, and they do it spectacularly well.

It would be an unsettling portrait if Tesich hadn't stacked every card against Alex. Though played by Yulin with ingratiating avuncularity, he is in the end a phony construct, more the product of a bile-flooded imagination than a character brought to life. He's roadkill.

But that's the way it is with most get-even plays. Tesich has certainly suffered his share of abuse from critics. "Arts & Leisure" will only give them more ammo.

Set, Douglas Stein; costumes, Susan Hilferty; lighting, Frances Aronson; sound, Bruce Odland; production stage manager, Alan Fox; casting, Janet Foster; production manager, Christopher Boll. Artistic director, Tim Sanford; managing director, Leslie Marcus; general manager, Lynn Landis. Opened May 19, 1996. Reviewed May 15. Running time: 1 hour, 30 min.