Celibacy, The Safest Sex

By RICHARD CORLISS

TITLE: JEFFREY

AUTHOR: PAUL RUDNICK

WHERE: OFF-BROADWAY

THE BOTTOM LINE: The tragedy of AIDS may have met its match in a heartfelt, knockabout comedy of manners.

Boy meets boy. Boy gets AIDS. Play gets raves. As much as penthouse comedy dominated the '20s or political agitprop informed the '30s, AIDS has defined American theater this past decade -- both in the ravaging of the creative community and in the flowering of dramas on the subject. There are angry plays (The Normal Heart), sweet plays (As Is), pageants (Angels in America) and musicals (Falsettos). Some soar into poignant metaphor. Prelude to a Kiss and Marvin's Room are really about responsibilities of marriage and family; the plays say that relationships of love or blood must be sustained even as the objects of our affection sink into confusion or decay. Love means always having to be there.

Rage and pity, even self-pity, have their place as well as their limits. Now let's try laughter -- the best medicine, as Reader's Digest, Norman Cousins and Paul Rudnick can tell you. Rudnick has already earned many a healthy laugh with his plays Poor Little Lambs and I Hate Hamlet and his comic essays in Vanity Fair and Spy. Jeffrey, though, is a real tonic. It's a wonderful comedy about a rancid tragedy: the crape of death hanging over any gay guy who is crazy about sex.

Jeffrey (John Michael Higgins) is such a fellow. This pleasant young actor- waiter grew up thanking God for the joy of sex; now he curses God because "life is suddenly radioactive." So he decides that the only safe sex is celibacy. He sublimates at the gym: "endorphins, not hormones." He rejects the amiable advances of Steve (Tom Hewitt), who is HIV positive. And gradually he retreats from the gay life -- not just the sex, but the camaraderie in times of frivolity and mourning. He doesn't want to attend -- and diss -- one more AIDS memorial at which the guest stars are "the Gay Men's Chorus, Vanessa Redgrave, Siegfried and Roy." He can't bear to "see one more 28- year-old man with a cane."

Jeffrey is a play too smart for self-pity. But in daring to laugh, then to cry, it reveals itself as a cunning twist on the old-fashioned Broadway-style comedy. It begins with a group grope and ends with a kiss. It is underscored with dreamy, pertinent Gershwin songs (Fascinating Rhythm, Embraceable You, They Can't Take That Away from Me). And it considers, with a wisdom born of irreverence, a genteel old dilemma. Until the pill, a threat of pregnancy ; loomed over any nice young man who considered having sex with someone he loved. Now especially for gay men, the threat is death. "Sex wasn't meant to be 'safe,' " Jeffrey says. "Or negotiated. Or fatal." But there's no sense moping, as a gay priest helpfully points out: "Terminal gloom -- who does that help? Even Brecht wrote musicals."

Rudnick has written a blackout comedy that moves like a 28-year-old kid on the prowl. Aided by the sprightly economy of Christopher Ashley's direction and a troupe of rubber-souled actors playing multiple roles, Rudnick lays out the panorama at double time: a game show, a Gay Pride march, a gay bashing, a taste of rough trade, a vision of Mother Teresa -- oh, yes, and a square dance. All with unfettered wit and a lot of heart. Who could ask for anything more?