Sin

NEW YORK A Second Stage presentation of a play in two acts by Wendy MacLeod. Directed by David Petrarca.

Cast: Kelly Coffield (Avery), Julio Monge (Louis), Bruce Norris (Michael), Steve Carell (Jonathan), Camryn Manheim (Helen), Tom Aulino (Fred), John Elsen (Jason), Jeffrey Hutchinson (Gerard).

The moralistic spirit of Ibsen hangs like a specter over Wendy MacLeod's sad comedy "Sin," first produced a year ago at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and vividly rendered by the Second Stage. Avery (Kelly Coffield) is smart, attractive and sort of successful. Her sin is that she doesn't, or won't, fudge reality: Like an Ibsen hero, Avery seems condemned to a life of ostracism because she goes around throwing the truth in everyone's face, whether they want it or not.

"You'd better lower your standards," her brother Gerard (Jeffrey Hutchinson) warns her. "Sin a little. It's less lonely."

Not a chance. To Jonathan (Bruce Norris), the alcoholic doctor from whom she is separated, "Get thee to AA" becomes a droning litany. She cannot hide the revulsion caused by Helen (Camryn Manheim), the fat best friend Avery's moved in with, telling her, "It's as if your face was anthropomorphizing into a giant pig" (and quickly admitting that she's misused the big word; not for nothing did Avery attend Yale).

Even Gerard gets the treatment: In the hospital, Avery can't bring herself to tell him he is still attractive when in fact he is dying of AIDS and looks it.

Set in San Francisco on the eve of the 1989 earthquake, "Sin" finds Avery in transition. Things are not going well. She's dead-ended in a job as a traffic reporter, spending her mornings aloft in a helicopter and her evenings criticizing Helen or snarling her way through blind dates with jerks who opine that AIDS is an act of God.

MacLeod has a fine eye for the telling detail. In his hospital room, surrounded by the dying young, Gerard scans the obituary pages of newspapers from distant place, taking comfort in reports of people who have died in old age. When Jonathan (Steve Carell), the blind date, makes his comment about AIDS, we are moved by the fact that Avery can't even wholeheartedly refute it; part of her, too, blames Gerard for not changing his behavior and now suffering the consequences.

"From the sky, the world is perfect," Avery says, but in truth the world is literally seizing up around her. Yet the worse things get, the harder Avery grows. Desperate to get home after the quake, she so infuriates her friend that Helen finally throws Avery out of the car, leaving her to fend for herself.

David Petrarca has staged "Sin" as a picaresque, mining the script for humor (he knows how, having done much the same with the late Scott McPherson's similarly morbidly funny "Marvin's Room") and keeping things light. Bits of Scott Bradley's earthy, stylized set move in and out to suggest the helicopter, a restaurant, the radio station, the hospital.

And the cast is splendid, with standout work from Manheim, whose wonderfully get-real Helen has a soul mate downtown in Nicky Silver's "Food Chain"; Norris, dangerously charming and funny as a husband drowning in failure; and Hutchinson, as the brother who remarks, "I think I have a certain consumptive charisma" just before dying.

Avery's redemption is saved for the final minutes of "Sin," and that's the play's chief shortcoming. Coffield beautifully conveys the smug toughness that barely contains Avery's essential fragility.

But she's still a character it's tough to cotton to. Not because her standards are too high, but because her targets are too easy: vulnerable people, for the most part, whose need for love easily transcends the carping Avery mistakes for honesty.

"Sin" ends, maddeningly, just as things are getting interesting for Avery, when she finally discovers that she has spent too much time "trapped," she admits, "with my best self inside," and opts for love. You can only wonder where this newfound knowledge will take her.

Set, Scott Bradley; lighting, Robert Christen; costumes, Allison Reeds; music, sound, Rob Milburn; production stage manager, Nancy Harrington; stage manager, Elaine Bayless; casting, Meg Simon; associate producer, Carol Fishman; press, Richard Kornberg. Artistic director, Carole Rothman; producing director, Suzanne Schwartz Davidson. Opened, reviewed, Oct. 11, 1995, at Second Stage; 108 seats; $ 35. Running time: 2 HOURS.

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