Daily News from New York, New York • 328

i DAILY NEWS 45 Frfday, January 8. 1988 3 EXTRA EW YORK LIVE frg: the dimensions of a campaign rather than merely a piece of theater. In it Shaw declares that women now have taken the upper hand in the age-old Battle of the Sexes. In part, the play satirizes the conventional drama of the late 19th century, drolly turning the tables on many familiar plots. Also, it is a commentary on the Don Juan legend.

Most of Shaw's characters are named for those in Mozart's "Don Giovanni." Part of its wit is that where Mozart's Don pursues women relentlessly (if unsuccessfully), Shaw's hero is the hunted rather than the hunter. And his huntress brings her quarry to ground with aplomb. The characters seem at times like pamphleteers and creatures of the stage rather than actual human beings. They require a sense of style this cast seldom has. David Birney makes an amiable, congenial hero, not grand enough to convey the self-satire Shaw intended.

Frances Conroy projects an arch sense of Victorian propriety, which she wields as deftly as Don Juan does his sword. Harriet Harris has an engaging aggressiveness as an- By HOWARD KISSEL Daily News Drama Critic "MAN AND SUPERMAN" By George Bernard Shaw. With David Bimey, Frances Conroy, Kim Hunter, Harriet Harris and others. Set by Bob Shaw. Costumes by Andrew B.

Marlay. Directed by William Woodman. At the Roundabout THE ROUNDABOUT'S production of Shaw's "Man and Superman" whizzes by so quickly it feels like a Speedreading version of the play. One reason it seems abbreviated is that it is. This production drops not only the "Don Juan in Hell" sequence, which Shaw himself considered optional, but also Act Three, which has a funny character who is important to the fourth act even though he does not appear in it "Man and Superman" remains entertaining despite such major surgery because it is more than just a play.

In addition to the four acts and the "Don Juan" interlude, the printed version has a long, stimulating preface (one of Shaw's critics called his plays "the price we have to pay to get his as well as the text of "The Revolutionist's Handbook," which his hero has written. The whole thing takes on in "Man and Superman." suii's CM i reaft Sacs DAVID BIRNEY and Kim Hunter other shrewd heroine. Her scene with John Carpenter, a tough American, is one of the strongest Jonathan Walker is winning as her callow suitor. Anthony Fusco is funny in the role of a technician, one of Shaw's most perceptive characters, shortchanged by the elimination of Act Three. Much of the acting seems at with a novelist unable to come to terms with the stage, or, particularly, in Potok's case, to sacrifice or transform his own novelistic passages into theater.

An experienced writer of musical books was called for here. Hearn, his features almost indistinguishable beneath a heavy beard, plays his unrewarding role with as much conviction as possible, and he is in excellent singing voice though even his musical numbers are heavy going. ACTUALLY, OU'VE got plenty of time to catch The Immortal George Shearing in his Cafe Carlyle gig on account of he is playing there fully through the end of March, contrary to what your otherwise infallible Lounge Lizard somehow managed to misreport to you last week. Good thing, too, since Lounge Lizard has had a brush with Our Friend Mister Flu these past few days even as yourself and everybody else in the City of New York, and he wasn't about to go anywhere even for the sake of his beloved readers. Lounge Lizard is personally even willing to put up with Mister Flu every once in a while, as he believes it is his Stern Calvinist Duty to endure Occasional Tragic Ritual Suffering purely for its own sake, but only for maybe 24 hours max, and after that he whomps up a 55-gallon drumful of The Official Lounge Lizard Industrial-Strength Antifreeze and judiciously applies it to his person for long evenings on end.

It's sometimes possible to coax your bartender into custom-building some aDDronriate remedial toddy, but bear in mind it usually a breach of bar etiquette to ask for one unless you are an absolute regular known to one and all and, even so, your bartender is not necessarily obliged to nurse your wretched whimpering person if he doesn't happen to be in the mood. Better to tank up on homebrew in the comfort of your own living room, where at least you can watch Kane Richmond serials on the VCR while you're dying. Everybody has a pet homebrew variant the classic base recipe is brandy and tea and lemons but it's a shame to waste quality brandy on something like this and since Lounge Lizard doesn't keep low-rent brandy in his cupboard his own preference is for a rum-based antifreeze: dark rum, big dollops of honey and the juice of many limes, mixed up into a concentrate more or less the thickness of heavy espresso, and then spooned out as desired into cups of scalding See LOUNGE Page 57 way for a Jewish state. For too much of the eve-ning we listen to what amounts to almost unrelieved sermonizing on Hebrew ritual and references to the Talmud. Although Potok's main concern is the discord and final cementing (in something approaching humorous terms) of the bond between the central figures, his play is too bogged down in sectarian matters to move more than fitfully from scene to scene.

Once again, we are faced the level of run-through rather than performance. It may get stronger during the run. Still, the physical production is handsome, the language cleanly, animatedly spoken. The play itself is like a series of fireworks. This may not be the most dazzling batch you've seen, but they're pleasurable nonetheless.

Philip Springer's score, while suitably sincere, is at best merely pleasant "Ladder to the Lord," an ensemble number meant to raise the roof, doesn't reach nearly that far, and "My World," sung by the Hasidic heroine (Lynette Perry), as well as an S9COND THOUGHTS ON FIRST NIGHTS Andrews sisters takeoff in My don't quite measure up. Gerald Kiken is winning as Reuven's Zionist father, whose precepts inflame Hearn, who feels only the Messiah must create a Jewish homeland, and Cray is engag-ing as Danny who, in an amusing finish, changes role models with Reuven. Mitchell's book direction is straightforward, but Richard Levi's commonplace choreography once again summons memories of "Fiddler" and Jerome Robbins' brilliant dance numbers. Ben Edwards has created a rich variety of set designs, including a span of the Williamsburg bridge itself, and Ruth Mor-ley's costumes and Thomas A. Skelton's lighting are above reproach.

"The Chosen" is an expensive-looking show with a large cast but it just lies there on the broad stage of the Second Avenue Theater. nrCca By DOUOLAS WATT Dairy News Drama Critic-at-Large 'T; HE CHOSEN," THE musical that Chaim Potok has adapted from his celebrated novel, is as hard to digest as a Hungarian dinner. Indeed, the first and longer of the two acts is so heavy that even the late Zero Mostel couldn't have given it a lift I mention Mostel because while watching this heartfelt but lackluster, didactic show about Jewish family life, I kept thinking fondly back to "Fiddler on the Roof and Mostel's Tevye. To those unfamiliar with the novel or the subsequent screen version, "The Chosen" is the story of the deep and troubled friendship of two Jewish youths in Brooklyn's Williamsburg section. The play covers their relationship from the closing days of World War II to the founding of the republic of Israel in 1948.

Danny (Richard Cray), raised in the Hasidic tradition by his strict father (George Hearn), finds his friendship with Reuven (Rob Morrow) thwarted because of the less severely orthodox teachings of the latter's father (Gerald Hoken). But inasmuch as both families are equally devout in their separate ways, there's little drama here for the uninitiated playgoer until the Holocaust and the war's end pave the 11 wiii 11 ww pm GEORGE HEARN, (left), Rob Morrow and Richard Cray (right)..