Broadway's Big Endearment

By RICHARD CORLISS

ISN'T IT ROMANTIC by Wendy Wasserstein

Broadway's got the blues. The current season has taken its cue from last year's box-office slump and dared to offer less of the same: revivals, British imports and a few ho-hummable musicals. The only serious new American play (Brothers) closed on opening night. Worse, for the main stem's economic and emotional health, there have been no successful romantic comedies in more than a year. It says something dour about Broadway, its playwrights and its audience that the last laugh-till-you-cry hit was Torch Song Trilogy, Harvey Fierstein's savvy sudser about a not-so-gay drag queen. You may begin to wonder if there are any heterosexuals out there who both feel deeply and write funny.

Wendy Wasserstein to the rescue. On West 42nd Street, within spitting distance of Broadway, her new comedy is showing the theatrical old guard how to be young, hip and acerbic without forfeiting involvement in affairs of the heart. Isn't It Romantic examines the lives of two old college chums--Janie Blumberg (Cristine Rose) and Hattie Cornwall (Lisa Banes)--as they approach their 30s and the dangerous prospect of a life without either Mamma or mate.

Hattie is tall, thin, gorgeous, Waspy, a Bloomingdale's commercial for poise. Her boyfriend is a married marketing exec who calls her "Beauty"; her mother is a trail-blazing career woman (Jo Henderson) who thinks Jean Harris got a bum rap. Janie is an underemployed writer, short, sad-eyed and Jewish, with an attitude problem ("Know what I resent? Just about everything!") and a rather complacent identity crisis ("I very badly want to be someone else without going to the trouble of changing myself). Her boyfriend Marty (Chip Zien) is a kidney specialist who looks like a Muppet rabbi and calls Janie "Monkey." Her father (Stephen Pearlman) is a nice guy with all the charisma of Muzak in a minor key; her mother (Betty Comden) is a danceaholic who can't let go of her baby. Janie knows how to make her mother happy: by phoning to say, "I just got married, lost 20 pounds and became a lawyer"--but she doesn't know how to make herself happy.

Wendy Wasserstein, whose very name is a deadpan joke on Jewish assimilation into the cheerleader values of Middle America, writes about Jews and Wasps without a tincture of sitcom condescension, finding poignant similarities in perpendicular lives, giving just about every character equal time and a fair number of laughs. Director Gerald Gutierrez has mined the big, handsome virtues in this deceptively modest play, putting a shine on everything from the show tunes and rock standards to the voices on Janie's telephone-answering machine (including the desperate plaints of Meryl Streep, in her best and most hilarious performance of the year), to the stagehands (who wear Acme Movers coveralls, then tuxedos, then jogging suits, as the scenic occasion demands). The cast is collectively splendid, with star-making performances by the two leads. Rose hits every mood, from rue to despair, with perfect pitch, like a manic-depressive Yma Sumac; and Banes, sharp and upscale sexy, looks ready to become an off-or on-Broadway Streep.

Though the leading characters often use irony as an invisible protective shield, the play's title is no joke. Isn't It Romantic is romantic--also bright, funny, sentimental and, throughout, inching toward wisdom. In its breadth and depth it calls to mind no recent play but rather two good current movies, The Big Chill and Terms of Endearment, leaving the audience happy and moist-eyed at the end. If you don't sail out onto 42nd Street after Isn't It Romantic, your spirit just hasn't been paying attention.

--By Richard Corliss This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.