IF IT'S `QUILLS' VS. ENCOUNTERING ANGRY PORCUPINE, PICK THE LATTER.

Byline: Daryl H. Miller Daily News Theater Critic

It isn't often that a play comes with a written offer to refund your money at intermission, but that's what producing director Gil Cates has done for the Geffen Playhouse's production of ``Quills'' - and he'd better be ready to make good.

The Geffen - an important new regional theater with connections to UCLA and access to some of America's top talent - is launching its first official season with this rumination on arts censorship. It's a gutsy stand, and with a better play, it might have been applaudable. But, alas, what's most offensive about Doug Wright's script isn't its graphic language, abundant nudity or simulated sex acts, but its pretentious, bungled artistry.

Three interminable hours of it.

``Quills'' comes to Los Angeles after a New York presentation that netted an Obie Award (the prestigious prizes for off-Broadway theater) and other kudos - which makes you want to smack your forehead and ask, ``What were those people thinking?''

And what were Cates and his team thinking when they put ``Quills'' on the schedule and enlisted the likes of director Adrian Hall (the Taper's 1990 production of ``Hope of the Heart'') and actor Howard Hesseman (CBS' old ``WKRP in Cincinnati,'' last year's national tour of ``Laughter on the 23rd Floor'')?

Printed program comments from Cates and Wright indicate that ``Quills' is meant to prompt a lot of soul-searching about what is truly pornographic or prone to incite violence. The play is meant to challenge us to keep an open mind and to stare down the beast of licentiousness within ourselves.

Indeed, it gets us thinking about such topics as the so-called decency debate that threatens funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, presidential candidate Bob Dole's attacks on violent entertainment and the perennial outcry about the content of song lyrics. And it declares: ``In conditions of adversity, the artist thrives.''

But many of us are so distracted by the questionable artistry of the show that these issues don't really sink in.

``Quills'' takes as its subject the writer who, perhaps more than any other, has sparked heated feelings about censorship: the Marquis de Sade.

The action unfolds in 1807 in Napoleonic France at Charenton Asylum, where the marquis (Hesseman) has been imprisoned. Unrepentant, he continues to think his extravagantly lascivious thoughts and commit them to paper. His wife, who is being literally spat upon by polite society for her husband's exploits, begs the head of the asylum to silence her mate by taking away his paper and quills.

The play then turns into a protracted inquiry into the point at which the so-called defenders of morality themselves become depraved. Stripped of paper and quills, the marquis turns to bed sheets, clothes and the walls, writing with wine, blood and unmentionable other bodily byproducts - thus inciting the keepers to deprive him of his furnishings, clothes and, finally, his very limbs.

Wright writes with a certain colorful flair, though in the service of an overly literal and determinedly wrong-headed vision. Hall's direction is similarly overblown, with actors bugging their eyes and arching their brows as they address their lines directly to the audience.

Not only does the production waste its opportunity to address important topics, but it squanders its wonderfully all-encompassing set - in which ropes, cobwebs and instruments of torture spill off the stage and into the house. All that wonderful detail sits there essentially unused.

But mostly, ``Quills'' wastes the audience's time and energy. Belly up to the refund counter, folks.

THE FACTS

The show: ``Quills.''

Where: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 LeConte Ave., Westwood.

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 Nov. 3.

Running time: Two hours, 55 minutes; one intermission.

Tickets: $32.50 to $37.50, available by calling [phone] or [phone].

Our rating: One Star.

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Photo

Photo: Howard Hesseman portrays an imprisoned, unrepentantMarquis de Sade in ``Quills'' at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood.