Off Broadway

What Once We Felt

 (The Duke on 42nd St.; 149 seats; $20 top)

By SAM THIELMAN

'What Once We Felt'

A Lincoln Center/LCT3 presentation of a play in two acts by Ann Marie Healy. Directed by Ken Rus Schmoll. Sets, Kris Stone.
 
Violet ................................. Ronete Levenson
Cheryl ..................................... ..Lynn Hawley
Macy ........................................... Mia Barron
Astrid, Yarrow ............................. Ellen Parker
Claire ........................................ Opal Alladin
Laura ........................ Marsha Stephanie Blake
 

If you think print is dying now, wait 'till you get a load of Ann Marie Healy's "What Once We Felt," a new play about the trials of the World's Last Print Novelist as she struggles for artistic integrity against know-nothing publishers and politicizing editors. Healy's parallel universe doesn't hold together terribly well and depends heavily on concepts that are christened and fleshed out badly, so it's up to helmer Ken Rus Schmoll to supply coherence and highlight the all-pro cast's delivery of Healy's sparkling dialogue, which he does beautifully.

"What Once We Felt" posits a city that looks a lot like New York and is populated only by women, one of whom is Macy O. Blonsky (given a hilarious Polish-Irish inflection -- O'Blonsky -- most of the time). She has written the very last novel ever optioned for ink-and-paper publication. In order to earn the right, though, she's had to lend her scan card to her publisher, Claire Monsoon (Opal Alladin), who is secretly a pariah-like Tradepack, the play's ill-defined subclass. Possession of the right kind of scan card is key to having a baby in this society, something Claire wants and Macy doesn't.

Macy (played with an impressively endearing level of entitled neurosis by Mia Barron) must then deal with her line editor Laura (Marsha Stephanie Blake). She is much smarter than Claire but also harbors worrying aspirations for Macy's novel, which, she believes, has the potential to encourage the Tradepack resistance.

At this point it's entirely fair to ask "What's the Tradepack resistance?" or "Why do people need scan cards?" But answers are not forthcoming. Granted, a little ambiguity about evil bureacracy can be interesting in a Kafkaesque way, but this play seems to be trying to talk about art more than about inequality, so the lack of explanation just makes the play feel unfinished.

Interestingly, Schmoll gives the production some great quirks that make the problems with inequality ring truer. Once, for example, when we shift scenes from a swanky dinner to a slum home, Schmoll and lighting designer Japhy Weideman dim the lights, but the diners go on eating in the dark, over the much poorer character's scene.

Moreover, though, there's just something tremendously unappetizing about a lavishly-produced play (Kris Stone's set is gorgeous) that lionizes an embattled writer who is the only character with access to truth and beauty and must do battle with the armies of halfwits and crooks between her and her adoring public. If nothing else, it seems ungrateful.

It also overshadows the play's two really fun, well-drawn characters: Macy's unctuous lit agent Astrid (Ellen Parker) and the insipid-seeming Claire, both realized to perfection by Parker and Alladin.

Healy has given both these terrific performers a lot to work with -- Astrid, who peppers her speech with a la mode French phrases and goes on at length about "the Classics," has such an awesome lack of selfconscious irony that Parker wrings spontaneous applause from her final motormouthed monologue. Even when she's not bringing down the house she gets to say things like "You really should try one -- they're stuffed full of liquor! Like sucking a shot from a wet sock!"

Alladin has a couple of similar verbal crescendos, though she comes off as a less likable sort of buffoon in the beginning. Its the turnaround that really makes her character worth noticing -- however uncool she may be, she really wants to raise a child and it's impossible not to sympathize with her when that opportunity gets taken away.

These two characters give us our clearest glimpse of what must have made Healy look so promising to Lincoln Center's new writers program. Hopefully, the production will give the playwright herself a clearer sense of her own strengths, allowing for a follow-up that better capitalizes on them.

Costumes, Linda Cho; lighting, Japhy Weideman; sound, Leah Gelpe; production stage manager, Jane Pole. Opened Nov. 9, 2009. Reviewed Nov. 7. Running time: 2 HOURS.