Biblical Tale as a Parable of Marriage

New York Times. September 23, 1990. By Mel Gussow.

Before there was Eve there was Lilith. In his new play, ''Lilith'' (at the Home for Contemporary Theater and Art), Allan Havis has placed Adam's legendary first wife at the center of a parable about marriage. Springing Lilith loose in our age, the play is as devious as it is diabolical.

The first act is in biblical times, the second in present-day New York, but the distinction is not intended to be clear-cut. John Lee Beatty's design for both halves of the play is clinically modern. Adam (Zach Grenier) sits in a room in or near the Garden of Eden and is interrogated by an offstage Archangel acting as counsel in divorce proceedings between Adam and Lilith (Allison Janney).

Eve, we are told, is on the drawing board and Lilith is trying to warn Adam against his forthcoming marital entrapment. He is eager to move on to a calmer life than he has had with this she devil. Despite the air of menace, there is lightness afoot. Speaking about the division of property, Adam says, ''I want'' - pause - ''the Garden,'' as if it were a Jacuzzi or tickets to the Super Bowl. Gradually Mr. Havis weaves an intricate web of lustfulness and deceit, laying the groundwork for the expulsion from Eden. In the second act, eons after the Fall, the story repeats itself in reverse. Adam is a self-involved New York trial lawyer with an Eve-like wife (Lindsey Margo Smith). They have one son and a seemingly durable marriage, and he has no memory of his former relationship. Enter the demon, according to myth, a child-killer as well as eternal temptress.

The scene is Strindbergian, as in ''The Stronger.'' The wife is sitting silently in a cafe when Lilith (now called Claire) intrudes on her privacy and begins to insinuate herself into her marriage. The sardonic language could have been written by a contemporary counterpart of the Swedish playwright.

Lilith casually demands possession of the husband - her ex-husband -for a day. The wife is astonished, then oddly receptive and finally resistant to all of the other woman's maneuvers. Lilith never lets up and the play spirals into stranger and more dangerous territory as amulets are raised against creatures of the night. Under Robert Bailey's adroit direction, the three actors are tightly bound in a balancing act. No histrionics intrude on the cool urbanity of the dialogue. Mr. Grenier's unassuming Adam is less wimpish than a man enthralled. The incredulous look on his face adds amusement to Lilith's machinations. As the modern Eve, Ms. Smith rises to bar the family door to invaders; the actress wisely keeps her defensiveness matter-of-fact.

In the title role, Ms. Janney is both fiendish and seductive, with a mischievous sense of humor. Even as she threatens retaliation, she maintains her poise (along with her provocative poses). ''It's witchcraft,'' sings Frank Sinatra on a record and, to broaden the musical references, there are also songs from Sinead O'Connor, all of which underscores the character's sorcery.

As in his earlier plays, ''Mink Sonata'' and ''Morocco,'' Mr. Havis shows a mordant wit, used this time to ask the question, who is Lilith and what is her fatal attraction.