Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune by McNally, Terrence - 1988

Garden City, New York: The Fireside Theatre, 1988. By FRANK RICH Published: October 28, 1987, Wednesday LEAD: WHEN we first meet the title characters of Terrence McNally's provocative new play, ''Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,'' they are grunting through an orgasm on a Murphy bed in a dreary Hell's Kitchen walk-up. But Frankie (Kathy Bates) and Johnny (Kenneth Welsh) are hardly sweethearts. They are fellow employees of a greasy spoon -she a waitress, he a recently hired short-order cook - and this is their first and quite possibly their last date. WHEN we first meet the title characters of Terrence McNally's provocative new play, ''Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,'' they are grunting through an orgasm on a Murphy bed in a dreary Hell's Kitchen walk-up. But Frankie (Kathy Bates) and Johnny (Kenneth Welsh) are hardly sweethearts. They are fellow employees of a greasy spoon -she a waitress, he a recently hired short-order cook - and this is their first and quite possibly their last date. They've been to a movie. They've made small talk. Now they've had sex. What else can they give one another? As the couple's panting subsides, Frankie hopes only that Johnny will get dressed and get out so she can resume her usual nightly ritual of watching television and eating ice cream in peace. Yet Johnny refuses to leave. A nonstop talker and meddler, he repeatedly proclaims his undying love for the dumpy, sarcastic waitress even as she rudely mocks his ludicrously overblown compliments and points him toward the door. The exasperated Frankie thinks Johnny is ''too needy'' and worries he may be a creep. ''You just don't decide to fall in love with people out of the blue,'' she says. Johnny argues back that Frankie, much wounded by other men, is simply too fearful of rejection to accept true affection when it comes her way. ''Pretend we're the only two people in the world,'' he says, insisting that he and Frankie, both middle-aged and ''not beautiful,'' have only this one last chance ''to connect.'' Should they fail to seize the moment, they'll never know more than the isolation and loneliness that already is their lot - a life of merely ''bumping into bodies.'' ''Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,'' which opens the main-stage season of the Manhattan Theater Club, has the timeless structure of romantic comedies: Will there be a second night to this odd couple's problematic one-night-stand? As one expects from Mr. McNally, the author of ''Bad Habits'' and ''It's Only a Play,'' the evening often floats by on bright and funny conversation, some of it dotted, however parenthetically, with jaundiced references to show business (''The Sound of Music,'' ''Looking for Mr. Goodbar,'' Kathleen Turner). But there has always been another side to Mr. McNally's highly lacquered sophistication: even his raucous gay-bath sex farce, ''The Ritz,'' had something poignant to say about transitory romantic attachments. In ''Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,'' the playwright examines his characters' connections with a new forthrightness and maturity, and it's just possible that, in the process, he's written the most serious play yet about intimacy in the age of AIDS. To be sure, ''Frankie and Johnny'' is not about AIDS per se. There is only one vague reference to the disease, and its characters do not belong to high-risk groups. Still, there's a pointed end-of-the-world feel to James Noone's drab tenement set and to the blank, Edward Hopper-esque solitude of the couple's existence. Mr. McNally seems to be taking stock of what's really important in a society where life can be ''cheap and short,'' where sexual marauding can no longer pass as its own reward, where emotional defenses are so well fortified that human contact is harder to achieve than ever. The persistent, nosy Johnny is as obnoxious a suitor as Frankie says he is - he's the kind of guy who picks at any visible scab - but his relentless battering does make her and us think about how much of love is fleeting chemistry and how much is merely a willingness to overcome the inertia of detachment and engage in hard work. Perhaps Johnny is right when he says his and Frankie's only hope is that they somehow forget ''the million reasons they don't love each other'' and build instead on the few reasons that did bring them together, if only for an hour and by chance, on one desperate moonlit night. Perhaps, too, the durability of their bond will have less to do with their various similarities and differences of personality than with their ability to remember the ''music'' of their first, hungry romantic passion. Music - from that alluded to in the title to bits of Bach, Wagner and Frederick Loewe - figures throughout ''Frankie and Johnny.'' The play's offstage third character is a pretentious FM disk jockey who would ''still like to believe in love.'' Mr. McNally may or may not still believe in love himself, but he has dexterously managed to avoid the tragic denouement of folklore's Frankie and Johnny (and of his last and thematically related play, ''The Lisbon Traviata'') as well as the guaranteed happy endings of boulevard comedies. In ''Frankie and Johnny,'' it's enough of a victory for the hero and heroine to share un-self-consciously the intimate domestic activity of brushing their teeth. But if the playwright avoids the trap of reaching for a definitive final curtain, he sometimes exerts too firm a controlling hand along the way. The hash-slinging characters both seem like second-hand William Inge-style Middle Americans - as if they were archetypal figures contrived to enact a parable rather than people drawn freely from life. Sometimes their credibility is further compromised by their slips into knowing badinage reminiscent of Mr. McNally's upscale Manhattanites. Under the fine direction of Paul Benedict, two excellent actors supply the spontaneity and conviction needed to override the moments of contrivance in their roles. Mr. Welsh keeps us guessing as to whether Johnny is merely sickeningly sincere or a weirdo, finally allowing us to see and understand all the pieces of a complex, damaged man. While Ms. Bates's Frankie superficially resembles the suicidal daughter she played in '' 'Night, Mother,'' the actress creates a wholly new character - a tough waitress whose wisecracks mask not a sentimental heart but an unsparing vision of the world. When Johnny tells her that he's a romantic who likes seeing things in a shadowy light, she typically snaps back that his idea of romance is her idea of ''hiding something.'' As it happens, we can understand both points of view in a play that brings fresh illumination to the latest phases of that old lovers' moon. AFTER SEX, WHAT? - FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE, by Terrence McNally; directed by Paul Benedict; sets by James Noone; costumes by David Woolard; lighting by David Noling; sound by John Gromada; production stage manager, Pamela Singer. Presented by the Manhattan Theater Club, Lynne Meadow, artistic director; Barry Grove, managing director. At Stage 1, City Center, 131 West 55th Street. Frankie...Kathy Bates Johnny...Kenneth Welsh . Book Club (BCE/BOMC). Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. Illus. by Some B/W Photos.