Theater

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Two married couples, linked by kinship and tacitly tolerated adultery, strive to have fun in what is for them a queasy setting: a gay ghetto on Fire Island, near New York City, where one of them inherited a house from a brother who died of AIDS. But they experience the gift as a reproach for past neglect, and with one set of too near neighbors blaring opera while the other revs up show tunes, they feel like interlopers, a misfit minority. This gay-straight conflict, subtly mused on, lifts Terrence McNally's LIPS TOGETHER, TEETH APART beyond tragicomic tone poetry about the lonely vagaries of wedlock. Since the play opened last month off-Broadway, the foursome have been exquisitely played by Nathan Lane, Anthony Heald, Swoosie Kurtz and Christine Baranski. Alas, both actresses depart this week for other commitments. The replacements are estimable -- Roxanne Hart for Kurtz, Deborah Rush for Baranski -- but it is hard to imagine that the emotional journey, all around the world on one sun deck, can be the same. -- W.A.H. III