AN HONEST LESSON OF LOVE AND LIFE.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

On its bright, beguiling surface, Terrence McNally's ``Love! Valour! Compassion!'' might be taken as an updating of one of Shakespeare's milder comic romps.

All the ingredients are present: A weekend (or three) in the country. A romantic merry-go-round involving multiple couples (who, in this case, all happen to be gay men). Good jokes. Good-looking people. Lotta laughs.

But what happens when all's not well and doesn't end well - when it rains on your garden party and death crashes your picnic?

Those seeking gently speculative answers to these and other premillennial anxieties are urged to head straight to Westwood, where a Broadway-worthy production of ``L'' should put the infant Geffen Playhouse near the center of L.A.'s cultural map, at least through Jan. 26.

Structurally, ``L'' actually is less like Shakespeare than like one of those languorous Russian pastoral dramas in which everything happens, though nothing ever seems to. What lends ``L'' its crackling tempo is the punchy humor and devastating honesty of McNally's writing, boldly realized by director Joe Mantello, who supervised several of the same cast members in the Tony Award-winning Broadway production and is currently buffing up a film version.

The actors bring a sense of complete spontaneity and high spirits to their portrayals of seven gay Manhattanites who gather on three successive holidays to eat, drink, sing show tunes, play tennis and skinny dip at the upstate New York summer home that Gregory (William Bumiller), a famous choreographer, shares with his blind lover, Bobby (Mitchell Anderson).

Joining Greg and Bobby on Loy Arcenas' witty, abstract set - which suggests a putting green designed by Rene Magritte - is scene-stealer Buzz (Mario Cantone), a self-dramatizing encyclopedia of Broadway arcana for whom all life is one big musical number; gentlemanly Arthur (Richard Bekins) and his prickly but devoted longtime companion, Perry (T. Scott Cunningham); John Jeckyll (Ian Ogilvy), a sardonic Brit who's tolerated by the other men chiefly because he's Gregory's musical collaborator; and John's lover, Ramon (Randy Becker), a 22-year-old Puerto Rican dancer whose self-assurance and Olympian physique sparks a lusty response in his elders.

The eighth character, James (Ogilvy again), is John's HIV-positive twin, a man as gentle and open as his sibling is harsh and manipulative. In a production with no shortage of sublime acting, Ogilvy's dual portrait leaves an especially deep imprint.

Much has already been said about the play's ample displays of well-toned biceps and backsides. But those who show up at the Geffen expecting a peep show (a la ``Party'') will be disappointed. In McNally's vision, nudity serves not as a titillating ploy, but as a masterfully realized motif emphasizing the frailty of human flesh and the fleetingness of youth. And with characters like these, the rewards go way beyond skin-deep.

Often speaking directly to the audience, the men talk in a patois of first-person confession and third-person omniscience. Being gay has forced them to think deeply about what love is, just as the long shadow of AIDS has forced them to ponder hard what life is.

Their story becomes one story, and though McNally celebrates their style and chutzpah, he doesn't spare us their petty jealousies and casual cruelties or the isolating despair that stalks them like a plague. Only once or twice does the playwright ascend to the soapbox or the pulpit, as when Bobby delivers a brief Act 2 sermon about the unconditionality of God's love. But for the most part, ``L'' doesn't flaunt its spiritual enterprise.

One of the play's best running gags is Buzz's insistence that everyone is gay - Shakespeare, Hamlet, Ethel Merman, Mark Spitz - ``and if they're not, they should be.'' Among the more obvious names he doesn't cite is poet Walt Whitman.

Yet the outdoorsy fraternalism of this all-American bard is evoked at the final blackout, when the play offers a Whitman-esque vision of nude bathers united in a baptismal brotherhood.

These eight gay men, McNally finally persuades us, have earned the right to stand in for all American men. Maybe even for all mankind.

THE FACTS

What: ``Love! Valour! Compassion!''

Where: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 4 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays; through Jan. 26.

Tickets: $27.50 to $37.50; $15 student rush. Call [phone].

Our rating: Four Stars.

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Photo

Photo: ``Love! Valour! Compassion!'' at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood features Mario Cantone, left, T. Scott Cunningham, Mitchell Anderson, William Bumiller, Richard Bekins, Ian Ogilvy and Randy Becker (reclining).