Opinion: 'Magic' Probes Inner And Outer Space

The alluring title of Lanford Wilson's new play, "Sympathetic Magic," may well mystify those of us unfamiliar with the phrase.

Since regular magic is notoriously capricious, we may reason, then sympathetic magic must be dependable: a kindly power that intercedes reliably on our behalf, sort of like a fairy godmother.

In the play, however, Liz (Tanya Berezin), an anthropologist, defines the term as magic based on the belief that one event can affect another, even at a distance, if there's a sympathetic connection between them.

She cites rituals performed by primitive tribes to induce the gods to do the right thing: staging a rain dance to make it rain, for example - not always a successful ploy, but comforting in its belief in an attentive higher power that can, at least, be appealed to.

Earth Or Heaven

Mr. Wilson is a Sag Harborite. His play, which opened on April 16 at the Second Stage Theatre in Manhattan, is about an eclectic group of family and friends all searching, in their various ways, for some form of sympathetic magic - if not on earth in sunny, neurotic California, then in heaven or the starry reaches of the cosmos.

Andy (David Bishins), an astrophysicist, slings his briefcase down on John Lee Beatty's clever high-tech set and lectures the audience on the visible universe, a grain of sand compared to the veiled beyond.

He works with a fellow astronomer, Micky (Jordan Mott), in a university observatory, researching black holes and other celestial phenomena. With their boosted-up telescope, they're looking for the farthest and oldest object that can be seen from earth.

AIDS Chorus

And they may have found it - there does seem to be something out there - but if the dean (Herb Foster) has his way, the university will hog all the credit for their discovery.

Dennis Barichy's beautiful lighting design also spirits us to a "medium-high" Episcopal church that displays a banner reading, Yahweh: I AM. Don (Jeff McCarthy), its gay pastor, labors tirelessly for his inner-city parish and its burgeoning caseload of AIDS patients.

He is helped by Pauly (David Pittu), his lover and the church choirmaster, who's rehearsing a chorus of sick and dying men in the "Kyrie Eleison" - "Lord Have Mercy" - from Mozart's Requiem.

Studies Of Shamans

Don's sister Barbara (Ellen Lancaster), a sculptor of monumental, "castrating" works, according to her critics, has just had a successful opening. She "lives in sin" with Andy and, unbeknownst to him, is pregnant: the secular artist and astrophysicist making a stab at the heaven on earth of human love.

Liz, the authority on sympathetic magic and Don and Barbara's mother, has devoted her life to studies of shamans and snakes' blood in her search for some sort of anthropological theology: she fears dying, and is going blind.

Rounding out the rather large cast for these straitened artistic times is Susan (Dana Millican), who's typing Liz's memoirs. She brings a puppyish gush of hero worship to the gathering of noted artists, scientists, and clergymen.

Stargazing

This is not the first of Mr. Wilson's works to stargaze. There are the earlier short plays "The Great Nebula in Orion," "A Poster of the Cosmos" (an ironic reference to the soccer team), and "The Moonshot Tape."

In "Sympathetic Magic," however, we find the playwright looking more deeply into outer, as well as inner, space: a seeker yearning to connect the baffling dots of the "visible universe" with imponderable infinity.

One wishes that Mr. Wilson had given himself a little more time to let this cosmic longing take root in his characters. They often feel like representatives of clashing philosophies rather than like people struggling to give meaning to their lives.

Excellent Acting

Despite brilliant direction by the playwright's longtime collaborator, Marshall W. Mason, and excellent acting, particularly by the no-nonsense Ms. Berezin, the funny Mr. Scott, and the intense Mr. Bishins, the play fails to illuminate the sympathetic magic between nurture, sexual orientation, violence, art, astronomy, religion, and the average person.

It is almost too abstract and too private at the same time: such unfathomable themes spread out before us, and such brief glimpses into the human heart - sort of like God playing peekaboo.