Men on the Take is definitely a Guy Thing.

        The Playhouse in the Park Shelterhouse stage is devoted to Guy Decor: green plaid covers the floor and the walls. Guy Stuff hangs whimsically from the ceiling: bowling ball, basketball, beer signs, golf clubs, weed-whacker, even a huge toy pick-up.

        This year's Rosenthal New Play Prize winner by Carter Lewis is an extraordinarily contrived comedy that addresses the differences between middle-aged white men and middle-aged white women. It dips into questions of mortality and wonders why it's all so darned hard when basically we want the same things — unconditional love and domestic stability.

        George (Tony Campisi) is a long-winded sad sack being divorced by wife Evelyn. He is reduced to spying on their house from the coffee shop across the street. Things look bad for George because he can see that she is having someone fix all the things he had promised to fix for years.

        Into the coffee shop strolls Jake (Walter Hudson). The guys strike up a conversation, and Jake soon starts making little slips that suggest he knows a lot more about George's situation. Sure enough, it turns out he's Evelyn's therapist.

        This little intervention is happening because Jake is scheduled for cancer surgery the next day and wants to help fix George's problems. (Yes, he has slept with his patient.) Jake has some major resolutions of his own, primarily his relationship with his wife, to whom he has been married and divorced 14 times.

        Karen Radcliffe plays the women in the guys' wild ride. She does a nice job with the sketchy ones and gives flesh and bones to Jake's wife, Helen.

        Men is unarguably clever as the guys pontificate their way through Mr. Lewis' male bonding checklist: road trip — check; professional sports event — check; brawling — check; cigars — check.

        As usual, Playhouse delivers a smashing production, with director Ed Stern finding the perfect comic and dramatic pitches and balances for the show. The acting ensemble is warmly engaging in a fine-looking production.

        The problem is that Mr. Lewis doesn't bring anything new to his arena. Men's observations would fit comfortably into a small box. In fact, they do fit in that small box almost nightly, on the better TV sitcoms from Everybody Loves Raymond to Frasier.

        Which is not to say that Mr. Lewis' primary audience — well-educated, well-incomed, middle-aged white guys and the women who love them — won't enjoy themselves enormously as Mr. Lewis coddles them in their comfort zone.

        What I find troubling is notthat Men is part of the Playhouse season (although we have already had one middle-aged white-guy entry in the Shelterhouse season in God's Man in Texas).

        It's that arts patrons Lois and Richard Rosenthal have a history of pushing artistic envelopes, and every year I look forward to the Rosenthal New Play Prize reflecting that desire for risk-taking. (They don't pick the winner.)

        The Playhouse is the only theater in Cincinnati with the artistic muscle to potentially lure the best new work from the nation's best playwrights. The Rosenthal New Play is Cincinnati theater's premier annual discovery.

        It isn't the slot to tell us what we already know. It's the slot we should be able to count on to provoke and surprise.
        Men on the Take, through March 10, Playhouse in the Park Shelterhouse, 421-3888.
       

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