The smog that blankets Los Angeles is commonly thought to be caused by an abundance of automobiles on the freeways. The playwright Theresa Rebeck advances a different explanation in "The Family of Mann": the dingy brown pollution is made up of the incinerated souls of those who write and produce television series.
As one of her characters, a writer new to Hollywood, views it: "The best of us, the stuff that makes us human, it evaporates. And we're left with sitcoms. . . . Maybe that's what all the smog is. . . . It's us, burning ourselves up. And then hanging there, in the air, like a disease. Like television."
Since Ms. Rebeck has written for -- and been fired from -- such television shows as "Brooklyn Bridge" and "Here and Now," who's to say she isn't onto something?
Considering the nasty business it chronicles, "The Family of Mann," which opened last night at the Second Stage Theater, is a fairly likable comedy, quick and observant if a bit ramshackle in places. Ms. Rebeck plants daggers in a number of Hollywood backs, but she doesn't plant them all that deeply. Like its heroine -- the idealistic Belinda (Julie White) -- the play may be a little too nice for the company it keeps.
Still, the playwright understands the calculating egotists behind her fictional series (also called "The Family of Mann"), which proudly bills itself as "quality television" when it's a prime-time inanity like all the rest. The director, Pamela Berlin, equally alert to the ways of self-deception, has assembled a spiffy cast to portray them. They could be the laid-back relatives of the predators in "Four Dogs and a Bone," John Patrick Shanley's recent vivisection of motion picture fauna.
Ms. Rebeck's plot, a familiar one, is the play's least distinctive aspect. Fresh from the East, armed with a Ph.D. and momentarily overwhelmed to be earning so much money, Belinda buys the official line and sets out to fashion intelligent scripts with a difference. Her high-mindedness puts her at odds with everyone else in the writers' room, from the autocratic executive producer (David Garrison), who would be happy ruling a small country, to the catty female colleague (Anne Lange) who has long since mastered the art of burying her enemies with praise. Even Belinda's love affair with a fellow writer (Robert Duncan McNeill), a congenial Midwesterner from all appearances, is fated to end badly.
Power is all that counts in this world. If you're not in a position to humiliate somebody, you're nobody. It takes a while for Belinda to wake up to the truth. In the play's wildest concession to surrealism, her consciousness is raised by a lowly black secretary and gofer (Lisa Gay Hamilton) who has sprouted great fluffy wings that will eventually carry her away from LaLa Land. (More angels in America.)
If Ms. White were not such an appealing actress, Belinda would be a bit of a dope: Candide's bookish older sister. With her eyes of translucent blue, tousled red hair and air of childlike wonder, however, the actress is oddly reminiscent of the young Giulietta Masina. The persistent naivete proves endearing.
None of the males can rival the manipulative bachelor in "Loose Knit," Ms. Rebeck's 1993 comedy, who didn't so much date women as interview them and then jot down his criticisms in a little black book. Nevertheless, the chauvinist galoots are out in force in "The Family of Mann," telling their dirty jokes and regularly sacrificing their integrity for advancement.
Mr. Garrison, a star of the series "Married . . . With Children" and presumably another person who knows this world from the inside out, gives a splendidly irrational performance, radiating good will and friendship one instant, spitting venom the next. Richard Cox, the embodiment of California cool, turns out to be a hatchet man with a temper as violent as the colors of his Hawaiian shirt. The one you almost come to trust is Mr. McNeill, a cornfed innocent. He's learning the ropes far more rapidly than his boyish manner suggests, though.
Most of the performers also appear in selected episodes of the sitcom in question, which means that they go from being sly as foxes to dumb as posts. Ms. Rebeck delights in pointing out that on the set or off, the humiliations they endure are basically the same. In fact, the chief difference between real and taped life seems to be that the taped version comes with a laugh track.
True, there is nothing shatteringly new here. The complaints Ms. Rebeck airs in "The Family of Mann" are the usual sour gripes that writers have about Los Angeles, a city she describes as "about to lift off." But the production is lively enough to make the tale seem fresher than it is. The scenic designer, Derek McLane, sees the corridors of power as deceptively bright places, while the Mann family kitchen gleams like suntan oil. (Accordingly, the lighting designer, Natasha Katz, puts sunshine everywhere.) And the costumer, Lindsay W. Davis, artfully dresses the actors down for success, although not too far down.
To survive in this system, "the whole trick is going along with it, but not really," explains Ms. Lange, whose deliciously full smile says "trust me" and "get lost" at the same time. Watching the actors search out the safe patch of ground where self-respect meets sycophancy and principle abuts craven compromise makes for the fun of "The Family of Mann."
Even as they're bowing and scraping, Ms. Rebeck's characters want to believe they're walking tall. But not really.
THE FAMILY OF MANN
By Theresa Rebeck; directed by Pamela Berlin; sets by Derek McLane; lighting by Natasha Katz; costumes by Lindsay W. Davis; original music and sound by Jeremy Dkyman Grody; production stage manager, James Fitzsimmons. Presented by Second Stage Theater, Carole Rothman, artistic director; Suzanne Schwartz Davidson, producing director. At Broadway and 76th Street.
WITH: Reed Birney, Richard Cox, David Garrison, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Anne Lange, Robert Duncan McNeill and Julie White.
