LIARS AND CHEATS.(Theater Review)

Had I been around at the time that J. Hartley Manners's notoriously treacly melodrama "Peg o' My Heart" began its historic run on Broadway, in the early years of the last century, I might well have been a fan. There are certain occasions in a theatregoing life--in life in general--when you want something comforting, a dip in a warm bath filled with the aromatic oil of sentiment. In theatrical terms, this means well-drawn characters living in a self-contained, dramaturgically sound world where, when conflict arises, there is a resolution--and the characters never break the fourth wall to comment on the action.

Horton Foote's "The Day Emily Married" (a Primary Stages Production, at 59E59 Theatres) is a distinctly traditional play, a narrative crowded with small-town incident and revelation which leaves you utterly satisfied. It's not a great work of art--it lacks the necessary scope--but it has great moments. These moments are the product of Foote's unimpeachable dramatic sense. Like William Inge before him, Foote is one of the nicest artists around, and you can tell that his characters trust him and give him a lot of sweet talk because he's a kind and patient listener. His respect and empathy for the emotional and practical minutiae of his characters' lives draw you into a world that, to contemporary audiences, might at first seem corny, but which during the course of the play leaves you feeling embarrassed for having dragged your cynicism into the theatre; it's like wearing hot pants to church.

The imaginary Harrison, Texas, is a flat cotton town of sharecroppers and landowners about two hours from Houston. It's not the center of the world, but you couldn't tell the inhabitants that--certainly not Lyd (Estelle Parsons) or her husband, Lee Davis (William Biff McGuire), landowners who are thinking about retiring and selling their farm. Lyd--Lee calls her Belle--is seventy-five, a former flapper who has lost none of her flap. She is charming; she's also sad, a woman with slicked-down hair parted on the side who wears caked red lipstick and resembles nothing so much as one of those fake Madame Alexandre dolls you see propped up on beds in trailer homes in places like Harrison. Like a dolly, Lyd loves pampering, and for most of her life she has demanded and received a great deal of it. She always wants more. She says to Lee, "You've been so good to me all these years. . . . I was talking to some ladies the other day, and they were bragging about their husbands, and I said, 'I have a husband who has never said a cross word to me and every morning of my life has brought me two slices of bacon and a poached egg and toast and coffee to my bed and kisses me and says, "Eat your breakfast." ' " Lyd is always cold (she may or may not be physically ill), and her neediness seems to be a bid for sympathy. This trait grows more pronounced as she prepares for the second marriage of her daughter Emily (the playwright's daughter, Hallie Foote), to Richard Murray (James Colby), a handsome bear of a man. A small-time entrepreneur, Richard has a special interest in the Davises' retirement: their land. Almost immediately, one gets the sense, watching Hallie Foote's spectacularly drab Emily (she gives a strong performance), that Emily's life is a triumph over self-pity. Emily is at the mercy of so many realities and desires--having to be a good daughter, wanting to be a wife--that if she buckled under the various pressures she would never get up. Defeated by her father's seemingly benign but ultimately controlling nature and by her mother's theatricality, Emily finds her value in being recessive and useful. A Southern lady of the old school, she was born ancient.

As mothers go, Lyd has always been a millstone around Emily's neck. She cannot bear to see her daughter noticed, even ...