'MT. MORGAN': A DESCENT INTO MID-LIFE DISTRESS.

Byline: Katherine Karlin Correspondent

REMEMBER the mid-life crisis? This dramatic staple of the '70s and '80s inspired middle-age men with time and money on their hands to buy Porsches, grow sideburns and trade their wives in for newer models. The MLC has gone the way of wide lapels - probably because a younger, more diverse crop of playwrights has made the plight of astonishingly wealthy white men look a lot less urgent - but it reappears at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Arthur Miller's 1991 play, ``The Ride Down Mt. Morgan.''

Miller, who died in February, leaves behind some of the great American plays of the 20th century. ``The Ride Down Mt. Morgan'' is not one of them. Here the significantly named Lyman Felt, who lands in a hospital bed due to his reckless and possibly suicidal driving (of a Porsche, naturally), claims moral superiority to his peers because he married his second wife without shucking the first - although neither woman is aware of the bigamy. Once they meet at his bedside, the conflict to be resolved is whether either of them will take Lyman back.

It's OK that Lyman is unlikable: American drama is crowded with anti-heroes. But Stephen Macht lacks the charm to save this self-justifying megalomaniac from being just plain sleazy. When he murmurs without irony, ``I walked through the valley of your thighs,'' in a post-coital moment, we expect his lover to burst out laughing, even though the script means her to be enchanted. Lyman is presented as a socially responsible insurance man, but his attitude toward the ``ghetto blacks'' he hires is as obnoxiously patronizing as his treatment of his helpful African-Canadian nurse (a sturdy performance by Earnestine Phillips).

A man who eats life, Lyman sees every woman as ``an undiscovered shore,'' and when he tempts death by taunting a lion on a lonely African Savannah, we can't help but root for the lion.

Since the discovery of Lyman's bigamy occurs fairly early, there's plenty of time for talk about the big issues: Truth, Deception, Life. ``I'm a bastard but I'm not a hypocrite,'' Lyman insists. So absorbed are these characters in abstractions that no one thinks to ask, when the family's story is broadcast on the television news, who leaked it to the press?

Lyman's younger wife, Leah, is written as an earthy Jewish goddess whose uninhibited eroticism gives Lyman a new lease on life, but Melora Marshall in this part is so brittle she might break. With her harsh make-up, tense body language and clipped line readings, Leah seems more like a rejected Beverly Hills housewife than a sexy muse.

The saving grace of the production is Botanicum Theatricum director Ellen Geer, who plays Theodora, Lyman's first wife, with authority and warmth. Bracing herself for a cold dip in the ocean in her L.L. Bean swimsuit, Theodora is a model of Episcopalian common sense, who never loses the glorious trait of being able to laugh at herself.

Heidi H. Davis has particular challenges in the direction of this play, which shifts in and out of flashbacks and centers mostly on a man confined to a hospital bed. The staging is functional, if not particularly imaginative, and an unfortunate moment in the second act has the entire cast sobbing. Willow Geer sniffles through the play as Lyman's adoring daughter, Bessie, and William Dennis Hunt has the thankless role of Tom, family friend and lawyer and the play's voice of reason. Indeed, he speaks for the audience when he asks, ``How much longer can this go on?''

THE RIDE DOWN MT. MORGAN - One and one half stars

Where: Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga.

When: 8 p.m. Saturdays, through Sept. 24; 7:30 p.m. Sundays, through Sept. 4; 3 p.m. Saturdays, Oct. 1 and 8.

Tickets: $15 to $25; call [phone], or visit www.theatricum.com.

In a nutshell: Mostly lackluster production of Arthur Miller's later play.

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Stephen Macht and Ellen Geer star in Arthur Miller's ``The Ride Down Mt. Morgan'' at the Theatricum Botanicum.