Not that she's an angel: She plants the rumor of an affair between her husband and Ella, a gossip that lingers and feeds on the low-level paranoia that informs so many relationships.
This would include the marriage of Ella and Peter, which at first looks so secure, as shown with keen observance by Rebeck and Hughes in repartee and shared tasks that form marital bindings over time yet paradoxically become part of the habits that slowly infect sexual desire. Curiously and strategically, Ian chooses not to deny the gossip of infidelity. By play's end, tender-hearted Peter will be shredding Ella's carefully tended garden and wielding a frying pan as a weapon.
PHOTO BY CRAIG SCHWARTZ
The convolutions of sorting things out: Reg Rogers and Johanna Day
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They already think the affair is true, so what's the difference, then, in making it true, Ian suggests to Ella, like Tartuffe trying to seduce Elmire.
It's telling that Ian, a marvelous character — a rogue, opportunist and master in the art of plausible deniability — has his case for moral relativism affirmed by the action: that people are neither good nor evil, that things just happen, and we're condemned, by whatever God inspires or tortures us, to muddle through this cesspit of corruption. And if we choose morality as our guide, that's just a fiction that serves the illusion of sanity. Sartre wouldn't have it any other way either, but as sitcoms go, it's bleak stuff.
The larger issue is what differentiates a sitcom from a more exploratory work. The sitcom — with the singular motivation of its protagonist, and the calculated procession of character collisions, like the strategically envisioned, ricocheting motions of billiard balls — reveals the playwright's apparent hand, the clear sense that the action is being manipulated with an Agatha Christie-like design rather than unfolding as eerily as life does. This is where the comedy's allusions to moral philosophy look like so much set decoration, and why this play of ideas, like Ian, is merely pretending.
POOR BEHAVIOR | By Theresa Rebeck | Presented by Center Theatre Group at the Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., dwntwn. | Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2:30 p.m.; Sun., 1 and 6:30 p.m.; through Oct. 16 | (213) 628-2772 | centertheatregroup.org
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