CULTURAL GAS.(Omnium Gatherum)(The Harlequin Studies)(Theater Review)

"Rhubarb," it says in my dictionary of slang, is Second World War vernacular for a "low-level strafing mission." So it's no coincidence that the curtain rises on Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros's witty, pugnacious play "Omnium Gatherum" (at the Variety Arts) to the sound of a low-flying chopper and the sight of a sumptuous Manhattan dinner party, at which the first three lines of dialogue are, well, the word "rhubarb." If, however, "rhubarb" for you is, first and foremost, baseball lingo for a bench-emptying brawl, you'll still get the point: the play is more or less an ideological free-for-all, and its opening lines mischievously foreshadow its authors' intention--to punch the lights out of every intellectual pose.

Under the confident and precocious direction of Will Frears, "Omnium Gatherum" is full of polemicists, but it is not itself a polemic. It is, more accurately, a provocation--a show of theatrical fireworks to enlighten our darkness. As the noisy dinner guests argue their way through post-September 11th hysteria, every position seems to have a point. Caught in a pinball machine of educated debate, we ricochet between arguments with a velocity that ends, finally, at full tilt. In the process, we come to understand the rumble of panic behind both dialectic and desire. The characters share with the audience a contemporary doom: they know too much and too little; the world is at once too close and too far away, and they are swamped with data. "We all got this on the Internet!" a hectoring right-winger called Roger (Phillip Clark) says, as he swats away the arguments of a bow-tied Arab scholar named Khalid (Edward A. Hajj) like a pesky mosquito.

Among other targets, terrorism attacks thought; the dinner party in "Omnium Gatherum" is a paradigm of intellectual devastation and moral paralysis. "We're listening, recap, recap," the hostess, Suzie (the superb Kristine Nielsen), clucks to her guests as she hovers over them. But, of course, nobody is listening. Jean Renoir once said the trouble with life is that everyone has his reasons. In the course of the meal, isms--Marxism, veganism, capitalism, fundamentalism, sexism, feminism, patriotism, imperialism, monetarism, Zionism--are passed around the table like nuts at Christmas, until the only ism missing is optimism.

Here American plenty is a source of percolating disgust. The evening's lavish menu, described in exhaustive detail, consists of "imported water," wild salmon from the Columbia River, and "freshly blessed lamb"--which, Suzie tells us, is "a dish from south of Pakistan, a favorite among moderate Shiites"--with "a tower of sliced ruby-crescent fingerlings" (that's potatoes to you). The icicle chandelier and the behemoth mahogany-panelled wall of David Rockwell's set lend visually grandiose accents to Suzie's vulgar behavior. A former caterer, she is now a Martha Stewart-like goddess of domestic art--a guru of greed and a whirlwind of punctilious control. Slapping a guest's hand, she cries out, "Oh, no, no. Bread is over!" Suzie paints a hilarious stage picture of the collision of desperation and solace. "People were looking for beauty in their lives," she says. " 'Esthetic Serenity,' I call it." She can't hear her own smugness--"I'm aware of my wealth. I used to be middle-class. I know how that feels"--but we can. Her cringe-inducing, self-referential banter is a perfectly pitched indictment of wealth. She has the best of everything and knows the name of nothing. "This is an exquisite Tenuta dell' Ornellaia from the House of Something, the year, let's see, squinting, squinting, nineteen hundred and eighty-five," she says of the wine. She eats the food of foreign countries, but, when the notion of sharing with them is raised, she draws a blank. "Share more with whom?" she asks, startled.

"Here's to forgetting," a Cambridge-educated left-winger called Terrence (Dean Nolen) says, raising his glass. A persecuted and persecuting vegan, Lydia (the excellent Jenny Bacon), responds, "Forget what?" Forgetfulness is, of course, what the hubbub is about: the talk, the food, the argument, the wealth, even the terrorism--in ...