6 FROM LA MAMA, second program of short plays.  "War" by Jean-Claude van Itallie.  "The Rescue" by Paul Foster.  "Chicago" by Sam Shepard. Staged by Tom O'Horgan. Presented by the Circle in the Square (Theodore Mann and Paul Libin, owners); lighting by Josh Sevilla; Music by Mr. O'Horgan.  At the Martinique Theater, Broadway and 32nd Street.

Last night, "6 from La Mama" presented its second set of three plays at the Off-Broadway Martinique. (I saw the last preview).  There are two interesting plays in this bill, and they share certain characteristics.

"War" by Jean-Claude van Itallie concerns two actors, young and old, and the dream figure of a girl.  The young man, bearded and hip, visits his friend who is a survivor from an old-fashioned theater of large gesture and gilt crowns.  Their period differences merge in fantasy-games that they have evidently played before, including various "roles" that they flowing and out of.  Together, too, they summon up the figure of a girl in late Victorian dress toward whom they both behave like young sons.

It is not plotted or schematically symbolic work; it is an exercise in pathetic imagination.  The pleasure it provides is chiefly in the way the two men play together, without affectation and with a conviction that sustains the play's delicate fabric.

What is missing is some kind of resolution, in an appropriate vein.  Even an unfettered imagist poem - which this play resembles - provides a sense of realization.  Here, although it is very pleasant while we watch, it is unsatisfying when it is finished.

The title, "War," suggests the battle, not between generations but of all generations against cold fact and the passage of time.
the two actors are nicely performed by Michael Warren Powell (he older) and Kevin O'Connor.  Mari-Claire Charba is the dream figure.

"Chicago" by Sam Shepard, the best play on both bills, is a fantasy-comedy about a young man in a bathtub.  At first he looks naked, but he rises to reveal jeans and sneakers, which are probably concessions to convention and rough floors.

As he sits in his tub, singing, soliloquizing, following the darting of his daydreams in rhyme, reason and unreason, we learn, that the girl who lives with him has got a job and is leaving that day.  She passes through several times. So do friends, who breakfast with her before she goes.  for the most part, the young man remains in the tub.

What gives the play its delights is Mr. Shepard's ability to follow fast after the ephemeral half-thought that is usually unspoken, and Kevin O'Connor's ability to speak it, sing it, savor it and hasten over it. The pair of the, aided by Tom O'Horgan's sensitive direction, provide a bright patch of truthful nonsense.

The ending -- in which the hero's private world is breached other people and y his acknowledgment of the audience -- seems to me to hurt the play.  Nevertheless, this is a free-flowing, salty and touching little rhapsody on a small incident seen through the prism of fancy.

The third play, "The Recluse" by Paul Foster, which deals with a demented old lady who lives in a crowded attic, is a tedious attempt at Gothic grotesque.

The scripts by Messrs. van Itallie and Shepard may be called antiplays.  They exist in contrast to the theater as usually practiced -- not as attacks on it but (one may say) as relief from it.  These authors are simply playing -- following the fantasies of their characters as they bubble out of an initial situation.  Surely one function of an experimental theater is to make such playing possible, and here it has been amusingly and affectingly done.

Besides presenting these two plays, La Mama's double bill promotes two exceptionally promising talents.  Kevin O'Connor, the principal actor, and Tom O'Horgan, the director, are both admirably at home with the realities of the stage and the intangibles of volatile imagination.

Copyright The New York Times Company.  All rights reserved.