Theater: Swinging, Sophisticated Party

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The world's first drama occurred in the Garden of Eden with only two characters onstage, and they decided that paradise was well lost for love. To a degree, this is the same conclusion reached by a latter-day Adam and Eve in a delightful one-acter called Dear Janet Rosenberg, Dear Mr. Kooning.

Janet (Catherine Burns) is one of those 19-year-old girls who cannot turn the pages of a book without developing a crush on its author. Writer Alec Kooning (Kevin O'Connor), urbane, 50, short of wind and past the crest of his talent, cannot receive an adoring letter from such a girl without replying in grateful ardor. Females being females, with their minds "half on virginity, half on the game," Janet maneuvers her hero into a meeting.

Poor Alec ruefully realizes that he makes better love in print than in person. The moment of climax is a moment of crushing, middle-aged anticlimax: "I can't make love in the past tense, and love seems to be all in the past tense for me nowadays." British Playwright Stanley Eveling then upends his hourglass plot with ironic precision to turn Janet into a successful young writer.

The second play on this double bill, Jakey Fat Boy, is a hilarious putdown of the hopped-up cult of being "with it." Much of the humor revolves around malicious In jokes about Kenneth Tynan, deviser of Oh! Calcutta! Jake, the hero (O'Connor), is obsessed by Tynan, referring to him as being "uptight with now," or else identifying with him: "I am up there with Ken Tynan and all the great lovers, all the major erotic figures." What Jake actually is, of course, is autoerotic, an onanistic intellectual voyeur.

These plays are for sophisticates, but Kevin O'Connor's performance is for everyone who ever cared about superior acting. His gregarious presence epitomizes the actor as host. Each playgoer is a guest at his party; he means the party to swing, and it does.