September 11, 2001, Tuesday

THE ARTS/CULTURAL DESK

THEATER REVIEW; Foreplay That's So Funny, Sex Is Just Superfluous
By D. J. R. BRUCKNER

Time is doing us in more quickly than it used to. In 1988, when Howard Korder's play ''Boys' Life'' first appeared, it came across as a mordant satire on the flabby selfishness of modern young men's search for emotional safety and sexual satisfaction with women -- in that order. Only 13 years later, whole patches of its once-resonant dialogue can leave you wondering what the play is all about.

The change is in us, and recognizing that is not comforting. The plot of ''Boys' Life'' has always seemed like a thin episode of a sitcom, but anyone who has spent even a little time in theaters or just sampling television in the last few years will find the concerns of these characters -- about honesty, loyalty, fidelity, trust, achievement and the like -- a bit quaint if often charming.

The director, Drew DeCorleto, and the cast of the Broken Watch Productions revival of the play at PC2 appear to take all this as a challenge that they thoroughly enjoy meeting, and their enthusiasm can be catching. Mr. DeCorleto keeps the brief, disconnected episodes moving so fast on John Wiese's Lego-like set that one forgets that the original Lincoln Center Theater production often felt annoyingly like a string of discrete blackouts.

The women's roles are stronger than the men's. Jeslyn Kelly as Lisa -- a waitress who puzzles us by finding something seductive in Don (Jeremy Koch), an idler who defines himself by doubts and hesitations -- reveals the toughness of her character when Lisa uses a thoughtless infidelity of Don's to make him see that, indeed, he can find safety only with her. Karen (Alli Steinberg) is torn between uncontrollable desire and a conviction that she is worthless. So when Phil (Andrew J. Hoff), to whom all sex is unspeakable hope, encounters her in a friend's bedroom, his education is a comedy of terror.

Danielle Savin as Maggie -- a jogger who deftly swerves around the advances of Jack (Leo Lauer), a married man whose mouth is all Don Juan while his manhood is molasses -- knows how to make insouciance a tempting virtue. And Teresa Goding as a one-night stand (who almost destroys the only romance in the story), makes sexual foreplay so funny that you conclude that it would be greedy for any man to want anything more. In the original production, this scene fell flat; it is instructive to see how much it can improve the whole play when it inspires as much laughter as it does here.

The male characters are exactly the tiresomely overage ''boys'' that Mr. Korder's sarcastic title suggests. But Mr. Hoff makes you apprehensive that at any moment Phil's spring might snap and he will go berserk. Mr. Koch makes Don's willingness to go along with every mindless joke proposed by his male buddies seem so craven that you constantly question this character's motives, even when he wins the best woman in the story. And ever so slowly, Mr. Lauer lets you see that the source of Jack's wit, which keeps him at the center of all these people's world, is a fear of life that he never shed when he never grew up. Making these three weaklings as memorable as those strong women is an achievement.

So the effect of the performance is very different from what it was in 1988. And even if some people leave wondering what the play is really about, they will have no question about what this cast is up to.

BOYS' LIFE

By Howard Korder; directed by Drew DeCorleto; sets by John Wiese; production stage manager, Barrett Hall; assistant set designer, Jito Lee; assistant stage manager, Stephen Brumble; sound editor, Adam Fumia. Presented by Broken Watch Productions Inc. At PC2, Ninth Avenue at 44th Street, Clinton.

WITH: Leo Lauer, Andrew J. Hoff, Jeremy Koch, Jeslyn Kelly, Danielle Savin, Alli Steinberg and Teresa Goding.

Published: 09 - 11 - 2001 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column 5 , Page 5