Opinion: Art Of The Dirty Deal

Jon Robin Baitz's new play, "Mizlansky/Zilinsky," subtitled "Schmucks," has more than one plot twist in its bag of dirty tricks.

Both a celebration and a censure of the art of the deal, this soiree of sleaze, now at Manhattan Theatre Club's City Center Stage I, delights and appalls with complete even-handedness.

Just when we think it has come down firmly on the side of rectitude it veers off into some sordid scam we can't help applauding for its sheer rottenness, despite the mutterings from our better selves.

Ethical Reappraisal

Mr. Baitz, known for the high moral ground of such earlier works as "Substance of Fire," "Three Hotels" (produced at the Bay Street Theatre in 1992), and "A Fair Country," has expanded an early one-acter into this riotously agonizing reappraisal of the ethical stance.

The action takes place over the Christmas holidays in 1984, mostly in a pretentious house on a hill above Los Angeles that Davis Mizlansky (Nathan Lane), a schlock film producer, acquired in better days.

Featuring a panoramic vista of a smog bank and a Christmas tree that might have been lifted from some Hollywood motel lobby, in Santo Loquasto's telling set design and Brian MacDevitt's bleak lighting, it offers little homeyness.

Mizlansky, in Mr. Lane's compelling performance, is in what might be described as an agitated depression. He's down but not out, just "out of gas," he claims - although he has been overheard in an elevator trying to sell his desk.

In the past, he and his partner, Sam Zilinsky (the ingenious Lewis J. Stadlen), perpetrated such B-movies as "LSD Mama" and "Hitler's Niece" for big bucks, but that market is now history.

Desperate for cash, Mizlansky is gearing up for one last killing, and, with the Internal Revenue Service sniffing around, he needs Zilinsky's more presentable persona to put it across. (Mizlansky himself has such gross tastes he sports a polyester tigerskin shirt and compulsively discerns great porn titles in the most innocent remarks of others.)

Last-Ditch Scam

The target of his last-ditch scam is a consortium of Oklahoma dentists led by Horton De Vries (the fabulous Larry Pine). The ploy is a tax-shelter operation that will produce children's recordings of Bible stories, "from both Testaments, the first and the second," as Mizlansky pitches it.

With titles like "Sodom and Gomorrah: The True Story," and "The Last Supper, with the voice of Flip Wilson," this family fare will be marketed strictly "through poor people's retail outlets . . . to ghetto kids."

When Zilinsky understandably phones with ethical objections, it triggers Mizlansky's manic set of defense mechanisms.

"Don't talk about value systems in this area code!" he yells into the receiver.

Zanax/Lomotil

Then Lionel Hart (the touching Paul Sand), an alcoholic television actor who peaked long ago in "Tintoretto, Art Detective," but whose name Mizlansky unaccountably wants on his letterhead, wonders if the deal might be illegal, and Mizlansky really blows his top.

"Is it illegal?" he roars. "Who gives a . . . How much more of this life can you take?" Then "I'm so tired," he trails off.

He keeps Zanax in his bathroom in a vial labelled "Lomotil" for people whose scruples may be rising to the surface, including himself.

Beneath The Sleaze

As the play unfolds, Mizlansky recruiting Zilinsky, Zilinsky holding out for a bigger slice of the pie, the I.R.S. closing in, the double-crosses mounting, and the dentists getting restless, Mr. Baitz treats us to some wondrously hilarious moments, but always with an eye on the humanity of his cheesy characters.

They may have soft, rotten underbellies and crawl through slime, but they also have hearts. Such a high-wire act - finding the need beneath the sleaze - is what distinguishes this brilliant young playwright's work.

Mr. Baitz shares a house in Sag Harbor with Joe Mantello, who directed this play as well as Terrence McNally's "Love! Valour! Compassion!" and Mr. Baitz's "Three Hotels," among other triumphs.

Energizer Lane

He has drawn deeply layered performances from his actors: Mr. Stadlen as the fastidious Zilinsky, Lee Wilkof as Mizlansky's lawyer, Mark Blum as a screenwriter, and Glenn Fitzgerald as Paul Trecker, Mizlansky's go-fer and allegedly a stand-in for Mr. Baitz's younger Hollywood self.

The one weak showing comes from Jennifer Albano, who rather drably plays Mizlansky's New-Age masseuse Dusty Fink, a part whose possibilities remain unexplored.

Making fully realized recorded appearances berating Mizlansky on his Speakerphone are the wonderful Christine Baranski as Sylvia Zilinsky, and the fabulous Julie Kavner as Mizlansky's long-suffering ex-wife, Esther.

But it's Mr. Lane who carries the day. He's not just funny ha-ha here, as he was in "Love! Valour! Compassion!" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." He's a disaster who keeps going and going, like the Energizer Bunny, and that's his fascination.