By DAVID RICHARDS

You have a choice.

The next time the neighbors are obliged to hold an informal dinner party, you can hide out in the pantry and observe the goings-on through a crack in the door.

Or you can attend "Wifey," a new Off Off Broadway play by Tom Noonan, which effectively obliterates any distinction between theatergoing and eavesdropping.

In either case, the experience is apt to be the same. Food will be consumed. Tiresome small talk will be made. Liquor will be downed. Rancors will be aired. Pills may even be popped. Then, the rifts will be papered over. The guests will go home. The hosts will go to bed. And, if you're so inclined, you can do the tidying up.

Since "Wifey" features the fetching Julie Hagerty as the reluctant hostess and a perpetually disconcerted Wallace Shawn as one of the uninvited guests, it may have the edge here. But not a big one. This is not a case of art imitating life. It is life imitating life.

The Paradise Theater, where "Wifey" is to have a limited engagement through Feb. 6, has even been made over to resemble a comfortable cottage in the woods. In one corner is a kitchen, where Ms. Hagerty actually chops up a head of iceberg lettuce, thereby establishing an early high point in the dramatic action. A short flight of stairs leads to a bedroom and a rumpled bed. The oval living-dining room, the chief acting area, is furnished with a low-slung table, four chairs and a tape player.

The audience is sprinkled here and about, although most of the spectators are seated on a padded banquette surrounding the living-dining room. The intimacy of the setting means that no one in the cast -- which includes the playwright, as Ms. Hagerty's husband, and Karen Young as Mr. Shawn's wife -- has to raise a voice in order to be heard. No one does. "Wifey" is a veritable symphony of muttered banalities, whispered confidences, muffled cries and food being chewed.

Mr. Noonan and Ms. Hagerty are, it seems, New Age therapists. Mr. Shawn has been attending one of their group sessions. Ms. Young, an ex-go-go dancer who now "does hair," helped him conquer impotence a while ago. Therapy has further liberated him. Now, obsessed by women in general, he wants to break off the marriage. Before the dinner is through, it becomes apparent that Mr. Noonan and Ms. Hagerty, although less loquacious, are just as unhappily wedded. A delicate balance, as Edward Albee observed better elsewhere, is being disturbed. Very little is expressed overtly, however. "Wifey" asks you to read between the lines, decipher the silences and intuit the truths in rambling conversations that sound as if they've been lifted from a tape recorder.

The performers' behavior -- "acting" somehow seems too forceful a word -- is authentic enough, and for a while at least, observing Mr. Shawn's blinking befuddlement, Ms. Young's vulgarity and Ms. Hagerty's willowy neuroticism in unvarnished close-up has its fleeting fascinations. Mr. Noonan, best known as a heavy in films ("Last Action Hero," "Manhunter"), is quietly creepy as one of those shrinks whose noncommittal posture is really a subtle form of manipulation.

Still, it's a lot to ask of an audience to spend 105 minutes in their troubled company without hors d'oeuvres.

This production is said to be an interim stage in the development of "Wifey," which the company plans to film at a later date. (Mr. Noonan took this route once before with his 1992 play, "What Happened Was . . .," which is to be shown today at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.) Unlike more traditional dramas, which have to be de-theatricalized for the screen, the loosely constructed "Wifey" is already halfway there.

They can call it "My Dinner With Wally and Julie and Karen."

Wifey Written and directed by Tom Noonan; sets by Dan Ouellette; lighting by Paul Clay; costumes by Kathryn Nixon; stage manager, Tony Faulkner. Presented by the Paradise Theater Company. At 64 East Fourth Street, East Village.

Rita . . . Julie Hagerty Jack . . . Tom Noonan Arlie . . . Karen Young Cosmo . . . Wallace Shawn

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company