Art imitates life, which imitates art, which imitates life, which – well, you get the picture. This is the rabbit hole that the prolific Sarah Ruhl descends in the latest of her plays to hit a Bay Area stage. Stage Kiss, seen in New York last year and now at San Francisco Playhouse, is a backstage comedy that has no hesitation in changing styles in the middle of scenes. It may be an out-of-the-blue fantasy rendition of "Some Enchanted Evening," a lurch into Noises Off-style farce, or a deux ex machina of easy-bake resolution.
But its main tone is vaguely realistic as well as somewhat surreal, and along with those tonal detours, it adds up to a generally amusing entertainment. The wobbles come mostly in the second act, which hits some dry patches that land somewhere between comedy and drama, and not terribly interesting as either. But even then, there are laughs and surprises that carry us through to the end.
Stage Kiss suggests a variation on Noel Coward's Private Lives, particularly the ill-advised Broadway revival starring ex-spouses Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton playing ex-spouses who wind up in adjoining hotel rooms with their new spouses. In Ruhl's play, former lovers identified only as He and She uneasily realize they have been cast together in a play as former lovers who are drawn together again. And in this case, life imitates art as the co-stars find their passions rekindled despite an acrimonious split years before.
The play within a play that stars He and She is a musty tearjerker that flopped on Broadway in 1932, and for reasons never quite explained is considered ripe for revival. Ruhl gets considerable comic mileage out of an awkward audition by the overeager actress for a forlorn director, early rehearsals including an unlikely understudy's misguided notions of lovemaking, and a scene from the fictional play's woebegone opening night, in which the injured leading man makes histrionic uses of his crutches.
Both leading players have, in real life, domestic partners, further complicating the onstage-offstage rekindled love affair. She is married to a starchy banker, and they have a sharp-tongued teenage daughter. The actor is in a relationship, he says, "with a schoolteacher, and she's nice so it probably won't work out." All the principals in this love quadrangle converge at the actor's apartment, a shabby space that inspires the director of the flop revival of the flop play to write his own script for He and She, now officially recoupled, to star in. But the tale of a Brooklyn prostitute and an Irish revolutionary – with a subplot about ophthalmology – proves to be the lovers' undoing.
Carrie Paff is quite delightful as She, a role of many faces, and if Gabriel Marin as He isn't as consistently vibrant as her co-star, he can hit some comic highs as well. Mark Anderson Phillips knows how to find the laughs in the low-key director who really should be in another line of work. Perhaps the biggest laughs are provoked by Allen Darby, who plays the unlikeliest of pimps in the second play within a play and the out-of-his-comfort-zone understudy in the first play within a play. A solid Michael Gene Sullivan plays the cuckolded (real) husband, and Taylor Iman Jones makes her mark as the perpetually angry teenage daughter. Millie DeBenedet gets her showcase as the actor's sweetly inane kindergarten-teacher girlfriend.
Stage Kiss is almost always operating on multiple levels that director Susi Damilano skillfully navigates. It seems to be more the case that Ruhl, the playwright, is the one not consistently handling the navigation. But for the most part, this alternating imitation of life and art is an intelligent comedy that is willing to slip on a proverbial banana peel for a laugh or two.
Stage Kiss will run through Jan. 9 at San Francisco Playhouse. Tickets are $20-$120. Call (415) 677-9596 or go to sfplayhouse.org.