At Loose Ends? Get Out

IN NEW YORK the air breathes back at you. Along 45th St., in the heart of the theater district, the limousines queue up at the curb like a funereal parade. As if staged by some cynical scenarist, a drunk's reflection appears in the shiny black of one of the cars. He ambles slowly, his image distorts as it sweeps over the doors, door handles, smoked windows and tail lights of one limo and forms again on the next, moving down the line until it drops off, lost in the gutter. Across from the Royale Theater, where a golden marquee has promoted Grease for seven years, the drunk stops to shuffle through a mesh trash can. He finds nothing but a wadded Times, straightens to resume his stroll and turns up Eighth Avenue.

In New York the people stare back at you. Two police cars grumble, drowning out the Salvation Army bells that ring across town and sit waiting, grazing on the sidewalk, spinning their disco lights. Their red lights reflect from the lenses of a lawyer's glasses as he walks from his car toward the block where the limousines are parked. The rumble of the police cars echoes off the brick of a church. The lawyer glances left and crosses against the Don't Walk sign at 11th Avenue. Several blocks later he edges toward the curb when a girl's face whispers in an aerosol-voice from the stone shadows, "Loose joints, man, loose joints." He removes his coat even before he enters the theater through glass doors.

In New York the pavement moans under you. A crazed auteur manipulates the crowds as they trot out of the Circle in the Square and the Uris simultaneously, steering them to another train of limos and a field of rusty Chryslers. The violinist's eyes reflect the melancholy dreams of a man who has spent this evening sidewalk-hopping. His bow claws at his violin while he glances woefully at the case at his feet, a felt-covered basin for six quarters, nine dimes and a tribe of pennies. "C'mon folks, if you give a little more, I won't play so badly. I teach at Julliard, really. Here's a little Mozart for you." He stops after four measures, scratches at his cap and uses the bow as a pointer to count the coins in the case. "Thanks folks. More." Outside the glass door, all the limos have gone home.

LOOSE ENDS At Circle in the Square, Paul and Susan fall in love on the beach in Bali. A peace corps volunteer who has spent two years teaching natives to build latrines, Paul wants to go home to a real job: teaching English at a Philadelphia private school. Susan, a young adventuress, breathlessly announces in a raspberry voice that she and the world have not yet been properly introduced. And so they part, this tall, dark scholar and this manic urchin.

Eight years later, the time chimes yesterday and Paul and Susan have loved and divorced. After one last torrid afternoon, Paul wraps himself in a blanket and flops onto a couch to look at slides--his life with Susan etched eternally in ektachrome.

Go see Loose Ends as the days of this decade dwindle. These vignettes about two people who play desperately at love, only to fumble and lose, contain more honest sensitivity about Americans in the '70s than any slick, year-end-wrap-up-mag or heart warming-hollywood-hack-job.

Kevin Kline gives an outstanding performance as Paul, a simple man lured by Central Park West trappings and an L.A. life-style before he sees through the plastic of his own costume. Roxanne Hart's Susan develops beautifully from the first day on the beach in her tight pink bathing suit to her last afternoon with Paul.

In that final scene, both realize the mysterious potency of this enigmatic decade. Susan buttons into her designer suit, the one with the tweed shirt, that reaches just to the top of her boots. She dashes on bold lipstick, a bottled scent, and jewelry she would have laughed at on that Bali beach. She smiles, says goodbye, calls Paul "Babe" one final time and exits to join her new lover for dinner. The decade has killed marriage, turned romance into a business and banished communication between lovers from the bedroom.

Paradoxically, a strange impotency also wafts through Michael Weller's extraordinarily naturalistic dialogue. No one tells the right jokes, no one makes the right phone call, no one finishes a project before the next begins and ultimately, Weller reveals that the youth of the '60s have, in the interest of self, failed to spawn a new generation with their former vitality. Weller captured that spirit perfectly in his first hit, Moonchildren, about college students in the '60s. Loose Ends surpasses Moonchildren in scope and finesse.

STRIDER Galloping off-Broadway to the Great White Way comes Strider, an allegorical comedy--with music--adapted from a Tolstoy short story about a horse. Unequivocably theatrical, the cast of Strider turns a bare stage into a field, a stable, a palace, a racetrack and a Russian steppe. Without pretension, from the first beats of Russian folk music to the last piercing neigh of Strider's death, this play uncovers the inhumanity of man, the horrors of a class system and the evil of ethnic, sexual, and age discrimination--delightfully.

Like Harpo, Gerald Hiken as Strider trots out a herd of hilarious facial contortions as he narrates his own sad story. Born a piebald--spotted with two colors--Strider can outrace but not outgrace his rival, Darling the stallion, who leaps and pirouettes with Baryshnikov's physical elegance. Strider loses his love and his potency when he receives harsh punishment from his masters for raping his girlfriend/mare. Then commence several years of gentility and peace with Prince Serpuhosky and the glory of winning a fantastic race against a fierce opponent. But Strider's fortunes collapse again and he returns finally to his original owners who put the worthless decrepit horse to death.

"The horse or the rider?" asks a challenger to the Prince. It's an old question, the slave or the master? Through the hoofbeats pounds a message: the horse may win the race but to the rider go the laurels. Seattle Slew would not kick up his heels.

But horsing around is what this production does best. The actors canter across the stage, flicking their whip-like tails, singing the chorus to this fable. The choreography is simple yet creative, setting the tone and changing the scene for each part of the tale.

One question rides with this play, however. Why was it moved from off-Broadway? Money? Strider should be an intimate evening of theater: the simplicity of this production looks out of place amidst the grandeur of a Broadway theater.

The translation from Russian could be smoother. Only Hiken delivers his lines naturally; his fellows are often stuck with awful lyrics and absurd dialogue. Nevertheless, Strider refreshes as a theatrical evening and also succeeds as a discussion of equality.

GETTING OUT This play slams the audience with a more personal discussion of equality. It is 24 hours in the life of a Kentucky woman who entered prison as Arlie, a hating girl-bitch who whored, escaped prison and finally murdered a gas station attendant. And it tells the story of Arlene, that same woman, who emerges from a long spell in prison to find that the four walls on the outside can be even tougher to escape than the padded walls on the inside.

This is the first play by Kentuckian Marsha Norman but it is worth a trip to the Theater de Lys on Christopher St. to see how she has combined these lives into one soul. Dale Soules plays Arlene, a wiry woman locking out her past, anxious to deal with the daily pain of life in the real world without resorting to crime, without ugly language, without her old self--Arlie. Simultaneously, Julie Nesbitt carries on as Arlie, Arlene's violent past personified in this small but gutsy, foul-mouthed girl who hates authority and only loves for cash. In the battle between Arlene and Arlie, between poverty and crime, essentially between good and evil, good ultimately emerges victorious. But the play ends with a question mark. A grinning Arlene demands of the hatefulness finally subdued inside her, "Arlie, what you doing in there?!"

The evil in Arlie lies deep in most people. Some sociologists would blame environment, others individual psychology for turning a kid into a killer. But Americans have not yet decided what to do with the criminal. Getting Out explores not only evil but the failures of the American system to prepare an inmate for a life beyond bars. Tautly written and brilliantly acted, Getting Out vividly breaks free of the insidious revived camp that plagues much of New York theater this year. Get out.