A down-in-the-dumps, about-to-be-divorced man sets off on a wild night with his wife's therapist (and ex-lover) in Men on the Take.

        A wife and the woman who's slept with her husband do a little road tripping in Women Who Steal.

playwright Carter Lewis (right) and the cast of Men on the Take: Walter Hudson (left), Karen Radcliffe and Tony Campisi. (Dick Swaim photo) | ZOOM |

        These two comedies by playwright Carter Lewis get overlapping productions this month at Playhouse in the Park and Ensemble Theatre, respectively. But they are not about infidelity, Mr. Lewis says firmly. They are about men and women and how they relate, but “this is not gender studies.”

        It's just that he's noticed “men and women both want to take the road to happiness,” he offers mildly. “But we have different gender maps to getting there.”

        Women on a mission and meandering men can lead to collisions at the crossroads if they don't get lost entirely, his comedies imply.
       Mr. Lewis admits to enjoying “taking something serious and putting a humorous spin on it.”

        While Women Who Steal came first, it's the world premiere of Men on the Take, which won this year's Rosenthal New Play Prize at the Playhouse.

        Mr. Lewis, the 1996 Rosenthal New Play Prize winner for An Asian Jockey in Our Midst, explains how the whole Women/Men thing started.

        “I was reading this book on menopause because I was completely stymied by (his older sister's) rages and the crying on the phone.”

        On closer interrogation, Mr. Lewis confesses that his first-hand knowledge of marriage “in liquid form wouldn't fit the bottom of a shot glass. I'm 50 and single.”

        For the last several years he's been an itinerant playwright/literary manager/university artist-in-residence. “I think I've maybe had two dates in the last six years.”

IF YOU GO

Men on the Take     When: 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday through March 10     Where: Playhouse in the Park, Thompson Shelterhouse, Eden Park     Tickets: Previews: $28 (today through Wednesday); $35-$43 Feb. 14-March 10. Any unreserved tickets are half-price at the box office from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. day of show. 421-3888, (800) 582-3208 Women Who Steal     When: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 20-March 10     Where: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine     Tickets: $28, students and seniors $25. 421-3555     Discount: Bring your ticket stub from one Carter Lewis comedy to the second theater and receive $5 off.

        Nevertheless, he wrote Women Who Steal in 1998 with two actresses in mind — the characters even carry the actresses' first names, Karen and Peggy. During rehearsals,these two actresses “got very vocal trying to sort out issues. I just took notes,” he says.

        Interestingly, the same women he wrotethe playfor are in the Cincinnati productions. Peggy Cosgrave re-creates her original role in Women Who Steal; Karen Radcliffe is in Men on the Take.

        Ms. Cosgrave says they never got vocal about Women's dialogue, which she finds “so genuine that you never have to fake anything. Most people think it's written by a woman.”

        But they thought Women needed a resolution. “I told Carter, "It doesn't feel like love,' ” Ms. Cosgrave recalls.

        In 1998, Mr. Lewis was still raw from a romantic break-up. So it wasn't surprising that he was in the mood for exploring the differences between women and men, and how some people are outgoing and others reserved, and how someone can say something that is completely misunderstood by the other person.

        “People take things differently,” Ms. Cosgrave observes, going straight to the source of the ongoing Mars-Venus debate.

        Mr. Carter re-wrote the ending.

Sticking with the subject

        Mr. Lewis wasn't quite ready to abandon the subject after Women. He had another play commission, went through his Women notes and started writing a scene that eventually became Men.

        Men is about a couple who constantly marry and divorce and re-marry. “Because it's too easy to screw-up relationships,” Mr. Lewis says.

        “And when you put a label on it it seems like such a huge betrayal that it seems irreparable, but these are good, flawed people. They're struggling, man.”

        The heroes of Men bond in “guy speak,” a sports code anchored to the Cleveland Cavs. “I am a woeful Cavs fan,” Mr. Lewis sighs, adding, “When guys talk about life issues, your communication mechanism is sports.”

Nearly a tennis bum

        An unrepentant jock who grew up near Columbus, Mr. Lewis contemplated life as a tennis bum until he started doing a lot of directing and writing while attending Otterbein College, in Westerville.

        Ms. Cosgrave suggests that the Men/Women gang is something of an Otterbein reunion, including her Women co-star Ed Vaughan, an Otterbein faculty member, and even Ms. Radcliffe. Ms. Cosgrave lets it out that Mr. Vaughan is playing a role that is “slightly based” on himself. Local actress Annie Fitzpatrick completes the Women trio.

        Joining Ms. Radcliffe in Men are Tony Campisi (who last appeared in Cincinnati in Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine at Ensemble) and Walter Hudson.

        Mr. Lewis' first play was written at college, a one-act based on his parents' divorce. These were followed, he says, by a series of “young man angst plays.”

        Golf with Alan Shepard, which he defines as, if not a cash cow, “a cash calf,” was inspired by his golf-loving father and “it still gets optioned every other year” by some film producer or another. He's working on a screenplay for Women.

        He's been commuting between Cincinnati and St. Louis, where he's teaching playwrighting as artist-in-residence at Washington University. St. Louis is also where the world premiere of his newest play, American Storm, has begun rehearsals. It's “about thoroughbred racing and the Cuban missile crisis and the JFK assassination,” he says.
       

A music man among young men
King Records legends win Lifetime Cammys
One writer uses two plays to look at women and men
Confessions of the happy couple
DAUGHERTY: Everyday
Family's story sparks interest in adoptions
Gorilla expert leads off zoo lecture series
No clowning around, she loves these shoes
Ballet students make scholarship finals
Dayton orchestra moves into new home with stellar season
DEMALINE: The arts
Sevendust plays raw, riveting rock 'n' roll
World of watercolors comes to vivid life at museum
Get a bead on local Mardi Gras fare
MARTIN: Food stuff
Serve it this week: Coconuts
Get to it