Cheever And a Dash Of Bitters

That repressed, mannered specimen known as the WASP may be breathing its last, having been swallowed up by multicultural, exhibitionistic '90s America. But you can still catch a half-dozen of these angst-ridden, Scotch-swilling types in full tilt onstage at the Source Theatre -- the arresting subjects of "A Cheever Evening," A.R. Gurney's theatrical adaptation of 14 stories by John Cheever.

Gurney, himself a chronicler of WASP culture ("The Dining Room"), has skillfully braided together a series of mostly choice moments from the master's tales of '50s and '60s alienation and regret in Westchester and Wellfleet. Source's production benefits immensely from the sensitive eye and ear of director Joe Banno, who has placed his actors in a gallery-like setting ("The Whitebread Museum," he calls it in a program note) and set them interacting as animated artifacts of a very particular time and place. A succession of Edward Hopper reproductions serves as apt backdrops, and the Source's rather airless, in-your-face playing area, decorated with only a few love seats, wing chairs and the de rigueur liquor cabinet, is just right.

Gurney's selection of material ranges from the humorous to the elegiac, and for the most part Banno and his company manage to shift gears fairly smoothly. After a way-too-affected introduction, things start humming with a nifty rendering of "The Enormous Radio," a surreal tale of voyeurism and frustration in which two performers play a troubled couple and four create the sounds and conversations pouring out of the much-listened-to radio.

There's an even more cartoonish quality to the vignette about a fellow (wide-eyed, very funny Bill Largess) rattling around in an empty house after his wife has left him; every ring of the phone, beam of light or wayward glance by a passerby adds to his sense of loneliness and paranoia. But a number of the more conventionally interpreted pieces work just as nicely. There's a wonderful seduction scene between an unsuspecting man (Kevin Reese) and the neighbor woman (Lisa Newman-Williams, in a spectacularly stylized, sexy turn) who'll do anything for a copy of his bomb shelter key. Allyson Currin throws a terrific, limb-splaying tantrum as a newly divorced lady making demands on her eye-rolling parents (Cam Magee and Largess). And Reese makes a powerful impression as a foghorn-voiced jerk of a dad going pub-crawling with his embarrassed adolescent son (Largess).

Though several of the scenes -- a pseudo-hippie daughter's run-in with her judgmental father, a roue's snow job of an airheaded young wife -- fall flat, the fault lies more with the script than with the production. And even so, one can always focus on Margaret Weedon's snappy period cocktail dresses and suits, or Newman-Williams's ability to assume the exact posture of Donna Reed or any of those other domestic sitcom goddesses, or Magee's Lauren Bacallish voice delivering Cheever's gorgeously wistful descriptions of seasons and situations.

A Cheever Evening, by A.R. Gurney, based on the stories of John Cheever.
Set design, Tom Donahue; lighting, Dan Covey; sound, Scott Burgess.
With Matthew Brady.
Through Oct. 27 at Source Theatre. Call 703-218-6500 or 202-462-1073.

© Copyright 1996 The Washington Post Company