PLAYWRITING ISN'T PRETTY

By BRAD LEITHAUSER

YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN STRANGE terrain when the arrival of Elvis Presley's ghost lends a feeling of coherence to the surroundings. Death has been flattering to the King, slimming him once more to a narrow-hipped hayseed, given to bold, abrupt gyrations and soft-voiced exclamations of wonder.

Elvis makes his appearance in Steve Martin's new play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, recently arrived off-Broadway after stints in Chicago and Los Angeles. The setting is a bar in Paris. The year is 1904. The chief protagonists are the young Albert Einstein (played by Mark Nelson) and the young Pablo Picasso (Tim Hopper), both of whom stand on the threshold of international fame. The source of the confusion--the reason why Elvis (Gabriel Macht) emerges as a beacon of light--isn't the heady intellectuality of this conjunction of trailblazers but an uncertainty of styles; the play doesn't seem quite sure what style it should be.

Is it farce? The dream sequence of a sitcom? A fraternity skit? A metaphysical romp? Martin is one of the most versatile comic artists in America: screenwriter (The Jerk, Roxanne), actor, brilliant stand-up comedian, as well as author of several short plays (four of which will be on a bill next month at New York City's Public Theater). While so many comics ossify by relying on a few dependable crowd-pleasing gags and catchphrases, Martin keeps evolving.

Yet any playwright who presumes to team Picasso with Einstein makes an implicit contract with the theatergoer: I'm going to provide intellectual pyrotechnics. As the two engage in their battle of wits, however, the drama begins to feel like a play of ideas without enough ideas. Picasso's one-liners aren't so much fireworks as kitchen matches. Martin has recklessly ventured into the country of Tom Stoppard, whose amazing Travesties (which convenes Lenin and James Joyce in Switzerland) may be seen as a rich ancestor of this poor relation.

The play, directed by Randall Arney, is disserved by a patchy cast. Susan Floyd flattens three potentially diverse roles (a seductive model, a brainy countess, a gushing "admirer") into one ditsy ingenue. As the wife of the bar's proprietor, Rondi Reed declaims, but does not convey, the pathos of a woman who bleakly sees through the egotism of much male solicitude. Hopper makes a sweet Picasso: you can believe he painted harlequins but not minotaurs. Most satisfying is Nelson as Einstein; a diminutive figure, he expresses something of an atom's compacted, ferocious potential energy.

Despite a few amusing gags, Martin's invention flags midway through Picasso. The play waits for a deus ex machina. And it gets one in Elvis, who materializes as a spectral time traveler come to discuss the shape of the 20th century with the people of Paris. What follows--the culmination of the play--is an enchanting vista, as Einstein and Picasso and Presley stand contemplating the stars. Where are we headed? The heavens are dark; the light is supernal; and the unlikely trio brings a pair of provocative messages. One: the old order is doomed; everything we live by is destined to go smash. Two: things are going to be all right.