Growing Pains

By T.E.Kalem

LOOSE ENDS by Michael Weller

An affinity with childhood -- irrepressible, irresponsible, zany, sulky --brings out the best and the worst in Play wright Weller. His previous drama, Moonchildren, was a balloon flight through the gravityless '60s. In Loose Ends, now at Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage, the characters are grounded in the '70s and undergo growing pains without discernibly growing up.

The plot is Simon-simple. Paul (Kev in Kline) falls in love with Susan (Roxanne Hart). He is a disenchanted graduate of the Peace Corps and she is distancing herself from Denver, Colo.

They live together in Boston, get married, and then the women's deliberation movement modishly turns Susan's' head. Careerism lures her to New York. After six months, Paul rejoins her, keenly desiring a child. Susan refuses to be his "baby machine" and has an abortion without telling Paul. Recriminations. Divorce. New lovers, and a bittersweet embrace at the fadeout. To confuse this with soap opera is to possess 20/20 vision.

Fortunately, Paul and Susan have friends who are fun to be with. Comic relief is generously provided by Susan's pal Janice (Robin Bartlett), prime guru bait who arrives in a sari, with a skull-washed boyfriend who is out of this world, Asian or otherwise. Kevin Kline's Paul sensitively conveys the perplexity of a neomodern man coping with a neomodern woman, and Director Alan Schneider's supple intelligence cloaks the nudity of the text.

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