`WICKED SONGS' BRILLIANT, PREDICTABLE IN SAME BREATH.

Byline: Paul Hodgins Orange County Register

`Art is knowing the basic rules and when to deviate from them,'' a crusty Viennese music teacher advises his arrogant American student in Jon Marans' ``Old Wicked Songs,'' making its West Coast debut at the Geffen Playhouse.

If Marans had followed his character's advice, he might have turned a well-crafted, frequently brilliant play into something greater than it is. For all its pleasures, ``Old Wicked Songs'' leaves one feeling that familiar paths have been chosen to the detriment of two wonderfully complex characters who could have gone in much more interesting directions, had Marans given them the chance.

The maxim-filled teacher is Professor Josef Mashkan (Hal Robinson), who at first seems like one of those eccentric Mitteleuropa mensches who populate old Hollywood films. Stephen Hoffman (Justin Kirk) has traveled to Mashkan's fusty atelier to try to solve a problem: He's a former piano prodigy who, at 25, has lost his ability to play.

At first, it's an oil-and-water match. Mashkan is courtly and Old World; Stephen brash and arrogant. Mashkan is moved to tears by music, yet has little technical talent; Stephen is brimming with virtuosity, but his music-making, like his life, is drained of emotion.

Stephen has been tricked into studying with Mashkan, a vocal coach, by his piano teacher, and he's furious about it. It's a predictable set-up - you know these two will eventually find common ground through catharsis - but in the first act, at least, Marans' finely tuned writing and the skill of the actors (who played the roles in the New York production) make such inevitability irrelevant.

Kirk, who looks a little like a young Richard Benjamin, does marvelous things with his voice: It's self-consciously flat, uninflected and nasal, like he's trying to squeeze the feeling out of everything he says. Sometimes Kirk lets Stephen's deadpan-at-all-costs delivery seem overly affected, but it makes for some delightful comic moments.

Robinson's Mashkan is the more naturalistic performance, and ultimately the more rewarding. (He is helped by Marans' writing, which reveals Mashkan slowly, one layer at a time.) Like a lot of older Europeans who lived through World War II, a profound sadness and resignation lurk beneath Mashkan's gentle-curmudgeon exterior. Early on, Mashkan lies about having a wife; we and Stephen soon discover that he has been a widower for 10 years. It's a harbinger of deeper revelations to come.

Unfortunately, ``Old Wicked Songs'' founders on these darker elements. Secrets of Mashkan's past turn the play into a heavy psychodrama that exploits the war's horror for its full emotional worth. Marans pushes the characters and us into pitch-black territory that seems both too easy a route and rather unmerited. You can also sense it coming a mile off.

We've seen this kind of soul-searching before, and while it makes for moving theater, it's hard to square it with such a comedic premise.

The play's most brilliant aspect is its use of music. Marans has weaved Schumann's famous song cycle, the Dichterliebe, into the plot in such a way that it informs and motivates the story. Schumann's bittersweet treatment of Heinrich Heine's love poetry allows Mashkan to make trenchant comments about the intermingled pain and joy that all good art possesses, and it prompts a lot of interesting conversation and music-making around Mashkan's grand piano (some almost imperceptible computer enhancement improves the actors' keyboard skills).

Other elements, as well, are masterful, if not without fault.

Markas Henry's sets and costumes give us an evocative sense of mid-'80s Vienna (but Stephen's three-button suit seems like a '90s anomaly). Director Seth Barrish helps reconcile the play's emotional poles through careful changes of lighting and pacing, although the first act seems a bit rushed, as if the actors know their parts a little too well.

The same could be said, finally, for Marans' writing. A play with this much inventiveness, humor and insight could have achieved greatness if its author had followed the professor's advice, broken a few rules, and taken us to places that are truly unexpected.

THE FACTS

What: ``Old Wicked Songs.''

Where: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 4 and 8:30 p.m. Sautrday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Nov. 2.

Tickets: $23 to $37.50. Call [phone].