Theatre in Review: Lips Together, Teeth Apart (Second Stage Theatre)

	Austin Lysy, Michael Chernus. Photo: Joan Marcus.

In Lips Together, Teeth Apart, Terrence McNally places two troubled married couples in alien territory: Fire Island Pines. I was about to write the words "enemy territory," for it is 1990, the AIDS epidemic is raging, and all four of them are facing their environment with a certain amount of unease. That they are there at all is because of a tragedy: Sally Truman's brother has died of AIDS, leaving her his beach house. Sally and her husband, Sam, are there for July 4th, along with Sam's sister, Chloe Haddock, and Chloe's husband, John. There is a tentative quality to their holiday weekend: For one thing, Sally isn't sure what she wants to do with the property; it's not an easy trip for her and Sam from their home in New Jersey, and it is worth a great deal of money. For another, there are all those young men, gym-fit and barely clad, occupying the houses next door. And both couples keep nervously circling the pool without going in.

There are other, darker currents underneath: John has slept, once, with Sally and continues to long for her. She only wants to forget the entire episode; he hasn't told her he is dying of cancer. Sally is pregnant but doesn't want to tell Sam, because she has miscarried multiple times and can't face disappointing him again. Sam knows about Sally's fling with John, but can't bring himself to discuss it with her; also, his construction business is in a constant state of peril. Riding herd on them all is Chloe, who provides a constant stream of food, cocktails, and unasked-for advice, while keeping them under her watchful eye.

Meanwhile, Sally, an amateur artist, becomes obsessed, while trying to paint a picture of the ocean, with the young man who swims out to sea and vanishes. She is certain that she alone is aware that something has happened to him.

This intriguing setup, putting two mainstream couples in a situation where they are in the minority, lends an extra dimension to McNally's group portrait, which is shadowed by intimations of mortality. Given all four characters' many secrets, conversations are rife with submerged tensions, and arguments are never about their ostensible subjects. They're a difficult, highly strung bunch, but their problems are universal ones of mortality, fertility, the fear of not being loved.

Yet, even as McNally grants them the gift of his understanding, he coolly notes that none of them sees the gay men surrounding them as anything other than oddities or carriers of disease. Sally and Sam fend off any social overtures from their neighbors. Sally, angry at Sam for poking around in the beach house's basement, says, "I don't want to know any more of my brother's secrets." And it certainly hasn't occurred to anyone that they might befriend the brother's lover -- who, we are repeatedly reminded, is black -- who nursed him tenderly to the end. Anyway, they all reassure themselves, he got the apartment in the city.

Lips Together, Teeth Apart was first seen a quarter century ago, in a production starring Christine Baranski, Anthony Heald, Swoosie Kurtz, and Nathan Lane. These are big shoes to fill, but the cast of Peter DuBois' production is certainly up to the task. Michael Chernus captures Sam's constant state of unexpressed anxiety about his business, his marriage, and the looming presence of so many gays; he brings a real sense of wonder (riddled with confusion) to the monologue in which Sam spies on two men making love. America Ferrera's Sally is genuinely befuddled by the turn her life has taken, as well as her guilt over her brother's death and the inheritance she feels she doesn't really deserve; at the same time, she doesn't shy away from the character's colder, tougher aspects. Speaking about men on the island, she says, without apology, "Seeing them touching sort of sickens me." Austin Lysy's John is a sardonic lounge lizard, tearing himself away from the Times crossword puzzle only to offer another cutting remark. Yet, his longing for Sally is achingly real, and, when he turns on Sam, nearly breaking his arm, you see the fear and shame in his eyes as he backs away from his own fury.

The role of Chloe, a self-described "walking nerve ending," all but demands a tour de force, which Baranski supplied in the original. The ever-remarkable Tracee Chimo finds all of the slightly scary fun in this professional flibbertigibbet -- "Jazzercise is about as profound as I get" -- who is also the doyenne of her suburban Connecticut community theatre. ("I actually preferred her Mame to Lucille Ball's," says John in a typically priceless McNally wisecrack.) Whether she is busy rehearsing "A Bushel and a Peck" -- she has been cast as Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls -- or assaulting Sally with yet another "teeny tiny" suggestion that is really a carefully sheathed insult, Chimo establishes Chloe's bona fides as one of the world's true screwballs. She also makes clear that all of this carrying-on is a kind of smokescreen: "I notice what's going on around me," she says, and as we come to learn, she doesn't miss a trick. Indeed, knowing what she knows, what looks like eccentricity is really a carefully tended form of courage.

Alexander Dodge, the set designer, has provided a picture-perfect rendition of a Pines beach house, with a little pool downstage. Justin Townsend's lighting design captures various times of day and also carefully isolates each character during the many interior monologues. ESosa's costumes are well-suited to each character, and Fitz Patton, the sound designer, sends all sorts of music -- including an aria by Gluck, a standard by Judy Garland, and the overture to Gypsy -- wafting over the walls from the houses next door.

And as everyone is forced to admit why they are shunning the pool, a new candor is established among them that lays bare at least a few of their hidden fears. But, as we learn in a coda sequence, there is still so much that is yet to be spoken. "No one wants to listen to who we really are," says Sam, but McNally listens hard to his characters and dares us to care about them, even while casting a stark light on their very real blemishes. Near the end, there is a fireworks display, which everyone watches, waving flags. It may be the most forlorn holiday celebration you will ever see.--David Barbour