Sometimes the hard act to follow is one’s own

New York — SUCCESS for a playwright, as Tennessee Williams’ last decades painfully illustrate, can sometimes be as burdensome as failure. The situation isn’t too hard to understand: Expectations rise along with the number of opportunities to disappoint fans, who tend to want what they’ve so memorably enjoyed before. Then, of course, there are the critics, a few of whom specialize in holding artists to the impossibly high standards of their best works.

These dramatists (one almost feels inclined to label them “poor little rich”) are damned if they attempt to produce more of the award-winning same and damned if they don’t.

The bind, however, isn’t inescapable. Loopholes exist. At least to go by the evidence right now on New York stages, which feature new plays by writers who have recently enjoyed that rarest of all confluences -- critically acclaimed dramas that went on to become commercial hits.

In each instance, the illustrious past casts its inevitably long shadow. Yet even when the playwrights appear to be wrestling uncomfortably with their own gilded precedents (and most of them still are), the results provide interesting fodder for discussion on the current state of playwriting, which seems, on the whole, to be more abundantly vibrant than has been the case in quite some time.

John Patrick Shanley, author of last year’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning “Doubt,” a straight play that broke all sorts of box-office records and continues to run with a replacement cast that features (get this!) the great Eileen Atkins, follows it up with “Defiance,” another morality tale about an institution as closed as the Roman Catholic Church -- the U.S. military. Martin McDonagh, the British playwright of Irish heritage who last season introduced Broadway to a new level of comedic menace with “The Pillowman,” returns with “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” a romp every bit as bloody and quite possibly more hilariously twisted. And Doug Wright, whose “I Am My Own Wife” won the Pulitzer and Tony in 2004, returns as the book writer of “Grey Gardens,” a new musical based on the 1975 cult documentary of the same title.

In addition, David Lindsay-Abaire and Adam Rapp, two emerging dramatists who have been tagged repeatedly as “ones to watch,” have major new offerings. “Rabbit Hole,” Lindsay-Abaire’s sensitive drama about a couple groping their way toward some semblance of normality after the death of their child, has arrived on Broadway in an exquisitely acted production starring Cynthia Nixon, John Slattery and Tyne Daly. And Rapp’s “Red Light Winter,” which was first hailed when performed at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, has moved to off-Broadway, where critics have been remarkably patient with its curious pacing and occasionally brutal naturalism.

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The state of theater

PARDON the brief editorial, but a note on the obvious gender gap in the American theater seems necessary here. Behind these male playwrights -- all of whom have been produced in L.A. and enjoy prominent national reputations -- lie commitments by theaters not only to take risks on their talents but to persevere through good and bad reviews. That this long-term investment by marquee venues doesn’t seem to be happening for female playwrights on the same scale explains why a similar missive from New York about Naomi Wallace, Rebecca Gilman, Lynn Nottage, Lisa Loomer and the Irish playwright Marina Carr unfortunately isn’t possible right now.

But back to the men, whose challenge is more aesthetic than social or political.

“Defiance” is part of a planned trilogy (initiated by “Doubt”) questioning the mind-sets of people who have devoted their lives to rigidly authoritarian organizations. Perhaps this explains why the new play, which recently opened at Manhattan Theatre Club, seems so haunted by its immediate predecessor. But the real problem is that the ideas animating “Defiance” are richer than the characters.

The complexity, to put it another way, is more abstract than human. Still, the drama concerns an issue of perennial interest -- the susceptibility of wannabe heroes to self-sabotaging slip-ups. Clearly, Bill Clinton backers aren’t the only ones puzzling over why those with the drive and vision to effect positive change so often stumble on an avoidable banana peel.

Lt. Col. Littlefield (Stephen Lang) is a Marine’s Marine, an attractively gray career man who believes that strong leadership can solve even the thorniest of problems. Faced with a flare-up of racial discord at his base, he goes on a crusade to advance Capt. Lee King (Chris Chalk), a black officer who’s joined the military precisely to avoid being judged (negatively or positively) by the color of his skin. Boundless in his confidence to conquer any challenge, Littlefield then proceeds to tackle discriminatory housing practices in the community.

His wife, Margaret Littlefield (sympathetically portrayed by Margaret Colin), knows him only too well. “You’re naturally scrappy and you’re looking for a clean fight,” she tells him. “What wrong with that?” her husband asks. “There aren’t any,” she replies.

That essential human truth is what Shanley sets out to diagram. When it’s discovered that Littlefield has made a sexual misstep with an enlisted man’s wife, his own overly zealous and, yes, simplistic style of prosecution comes back to haunt him, even if the man in charge of administering justice, Capt. King, hasn’t the same relish for the job.

Like “Doubt,” “Defiance” explores what happens when an inflexible black-white mentality encounters a situation of troubling grayness. In both plays, a suspected wrongdoing is linked to valuable good work, and a character’s impatience with ambiguity stems from a fearful lack of self-knowledge. But unlike “Doubt’s” Sister Aloysius (indelibly originated by Cherry Jones), the martinet-like nun who accuses a priest of sexually abusing a male student, Littlefield confronts a malfeasance that is inarguably his own doing.

Shanley handles this worthy conundrum with his customary intricacy. But the complicated meanings are spelled out rather than embodied. “You’ve taken orders all your life, passed them on, but you’ve never thought,” Margaret tells her husband toward the end -- just in case we’ve missed the point. Their relationship is the most hauntingly drawn, yet even here dialogue verges on debate.

McDonagh’s new play, which opened at the Atlantic Theater Company last month and is headed to Broadway this spring, revolves around one basic idea -- a point that may be a liability for some. Fortunately, the thematic concern animating “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” (the ludicrous illogic and sentimentality of terrorists) is a good one -- good enough, in fact, to motivate an onslaught of cat mutilations, bullet wounds to the eyes and bloody corpse dismemberments. Would you believe that this play is also excruciatingly funny?

To be honest, I’ve always had a blind spot when it comes to McDonagh. His wit is piercing, but his wisdom has been less so. “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” with its phony, mean-spirited ending, and “The Pillowman,” with its sensationalized cat-and-mouse games with the audience, signaled the triumph of flashy technique over vision. Mine was a minority view, but it wasn’t reached for failure to appreciate his language’s comic bite. Beautifully staged as his dramatic worlds typically were, they always struck me as profoundly contrived and manipulative.

That “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” doesn’t aspire to be more than a comedy -- albeit a blood-spurting one -- works in its favor. Here, McDonagh accomplishes what he had trouble establishing in the past -- a persuasive storytelling tone. The plot, less ambitious than those of his other plays, sparks from the slaughter of a cat that is the beloved pet of Padraic (David Wilmot), a strong arm in a clumsy IRA splinter group.

When Padraic returns home to discover what’s happened to his darling kitty, he goes on a rampage with a rifle-toting young lass named Mairead (Kerry Condon), who has a penchant for him as well as for blinding cattle. The carnage they wreak engulfs family members and fellow terrorists but reaches a frightening crescendo when it’s discovered that another favored cat was cruelly murdered.

Director Wilson Milam and his terrific cast find the levity in McDonagh’s satiric parable of atrocity. When the stage is chockablock with gory body parts, the audience is most disturbingly amused. And the reason is that the violence is gaudy but not gratuitous. The play demonstrates by analogy how men can fly planes into buildings for the promised pleasure of enjoying a squadron of virgins in the afterlife. Like the best comedies, it allows reason to follow its distortions to the edge of disaster -- and then, with McDonagh in command, to be hurled into the abyss with a kick in the backside.

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Vivid performance

THE Playwrights Horizons production of “Grey Gardens” was inspired by the documentary about Jackie Kennedy’s eccentric aunt Edith Bouvier Beale and cousin “Little” Edie Beale, two outre types living in a decrepit East Hampton mansion overridden with cats (don’t tell McDonagh), cobwebs and canned pate. Transformed into a musical featuring Wright’s book, Scott Frankel’s score and Michael Korie’s lyrics, the show hasn’t yet melded into a coherent work.

Given that the first half is more sung-through musical than play, and the second more a retread of the documentary than either, it’s unclear of the exact nature of Wright’s contribution. But like his brilliant “I Am My Own Wife,” this new production, directed by Michael Greif, offers a tour de force that, despite the lumpiness of the show, will go down as one of the most vivid off-Broadway musical performances in recent years.

Christine Ebersole plays mother Edith in the fictionalized first half (set in 1943) as well as middle-aged Little Edie in the more fact-based second (set in 1973). The uncanny accuracy of her historical re-creations is as impressive as her Tony-winning way around a song. These transformations occur not simply through her characters’ infamous wardrobe choices but through subtle shifts in her physical and spiritual being.

Ebersole is supported by Mary Louise Wilson, who deftly portrays Edith in her dotage. The force of their acting allows you to overlook the musical’s unwieldiness and, sorry to say, not particularly rousing songs (it’s like Sondheim without the audacious energy and verbal dazzle). Yet the conceit of the work is so tantalizing, I couldn’t help but wish that Wright had written a fuller dramatic version and that the music was more incidental. The glorious leads, however, should be signed again immediately.

There are few things more satisfying than appreciating the work of a writer who hasn’t bowled you over in the past. Case in point: the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Biltmore Theater production of Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole,” a drama with the well-observed poignancy of a memorable short story. Unlike the playwright’s earlier farces, such as “Fuddy Meers” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” both of which involve protagonists with quirky medical conditions, or the willfully kooky “Wonder of the World,” about a woman on the lam from her husband (who has an unmentionably peculiar sexual fetish), this latest earns both its idiosyncrasy and heartbreak.

The dimensions of the play are conventional. Becca (Cynthia Nixon at her nuanced best) can’t seem to gather herself after the death of her child, who was killed by a car while chasing his dog.

Her marriage to Howie (the always excellent John Slattery) has become something of a battlefield, even though he’s a model of patient understanding -- at least until their sexlessness finally gets to him. And though her sister (a wonderfully garish Mary Catherine Garrison) tries to amuse her with tales from her trashy life and her mother (Tyne Daly, in a welcome stage return) shares her experience of losing an adult drug-addicted son, Becca doesn’t want to relinquish what connects her most viscerally to her absent boy -- her mourning.

Daniel Sullivan’s beautifully measured production never overplays the pathos, even when the contrite teenager who was driving the fatal car appears on the scene. Jason (John Gallagher Jr.), a disassociated adolescent in need of forgiveness, becomes to Becca a partner in mute grief and necessary recovery.

The title “Rabbit Hole” suggests the alternative universes of sorrow that strangers might not ever suspect one another of inhabiting. It’s a theme that runs through all of Lindsay-Abaire’s work -- and here is brought to full realistic flower.

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Twentysomething despair

NATURALISM of a more halting order is on display in Rapp’s “Red Light Winter,” which recalls his earlier “Blackbird,” a claustrophobic tale of two heroin addicts living on the Lower East Side. Here the action revolves around a triangle of characters, two buddies recently out of college and a prostitute in Amsterdam they fleetingly encounter who later seeks one of them out (the wrong one, naturally) in the East Village. But the movement is just as closely studied as its predecessor -- and, truth be told, dramatically monotonous.

The play slowly reveals the way a chance encounter can take on surprising significance for one person while not registering much in the other. The bleakness at the heart of “Red Light Winter” may be overindulged (imagine a Cassavetes film enacted at a snail’s pace by Gen X slackers), but there’s something painfully authentic about it. And hard-pressed as I would be to recommend running to see it, the work strives to theatrically represent new modes of alienation and twentysomething despair.

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Beckett, whose presence is palpable throughout Rapp’s work, suggests that this is the best any artist can do -- even one basking in grand success or its future promise. Creators of their own universes, playwrights can’t afford to be distracted. After all, these brand-new worlds are most convincing when captured with the blinkered belief of McDonagh’s blood farce or Lindsay-Abaire’s grief-stricken heart.

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Contact Charles McNulty at [email protected]