By Linda Winer

BAD HABITS. Two one-act comedies by Terrence McNally, directed by Paul Benedict. With Kate Nelligan, Nathan Lane, Faith Prince, David Cromwell, Robert Clohessy, Bill Buell, Ralph Marrero, Michael Mantell. Sets by John Lee Beatty, costumes by Jane Greenwood, lights by Peter Kaczorowski. Manhattan Theater Club, 55th Street west of Sixth Avenue, Manhattan.

THERE PROBABLY is social criticism lurking among the laughs of "Bad Habits," but, hey, don't sweat it. Terrence McNally's 1974 double bill, which was revived at the Manhattan Theater Club last night, is basically a good-natured couple of extended cartoon sketches about the nature of human frailty.

The actors, including Nathan Lane, are sublime and, in the case of Kate Nelligan, startlingly nutty. The style is sweet and often even lunatic. The absurdities are awfully familiar, however. The targets are broad and the silliness can get loud and sophomoric. But McNally's gusto and weird respect for his characters keep drawing us back to them, too.

"Bad Habits" may have seemed more than that 16 years ago, when it won an Obie and moved to Broadway. The mad-sanitarium settings were probably a wilder idea in the days before "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was a movie and Joe Orton's darker sex farces were almost common theatrical fare.

But McNally, who has gone on to create such riches as "The Lisbon Traviata" and "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," was a pretty deft observer then, too. Paul Benedict, who performed in the original, has staged the slightly updated version with expert timing and more than enough garishly sunny touches - including off-stage percussion rim-shots for a succession of intentionally bad one-liners.

Both plays are set in therapeutic spas with contrasting views of indulgence. "Dunelawn" (inexplicably titled "Ravenswood" in 1974) is a high-priced retreat for troubled marriages where the guru doctor (Lane) encourages patients to live out their fantasies. "Ravenswood" (originally "Dunelawn") is a strict operation where sinners voluntarily climb into straitjackets to be medicated senseless and worship a doctor (played with exquisite fatuousness by David Cromwell) who comforts them in unintelligible baby talk.

MCNALLY DOESN'T mind milking jokes in "Dunelawn" or letting the chase scenes run on in "Ravenswood." He's also shameless about his characters' names, especially in "Dunelawn," where an overbearing couple of show-biz losers are named the Pitts, the Nazi masseur with the shaved head is Otto (Ralph Marrero), the doctor is Dr. Pepper, and frequently, when he greets Dolly, the unhappy suburban housewife, he says, "Hello, Dolly." Not all the humor is on that level, but none of it betrays the play's essential foolishness.

Nelligan, mainly known here for fine and sober work, is literally unrecognizable at first as April Pitt, the gum-chomping, aging Jersey starlet who, with her actor-husband (Robert Clohessy), is wondrously insecure and egomaniacal, dependent and competitive.

Lane, high off his triumph in "The Lisbon Traviata," holds the center as Dr. Pepper, author of "Marriage for the Fun of It" and advocate of drinking, smoking and adultery in all their glories. Faith Prince and Michael Mantell are the Larchmont couple who keep trying to kill each other, while Cromwell and Bill Buell are perfect as the couple of aging male blue bloods.

Over at "Ravenswood," Nelligan is Big Nurse Benson with a nervous twitch, the zeal of a reformed sinner and the need to impose her "Zero Defect" restrictions on Nurse Hedges (Prince), who snivels. Lane is bleary and palpably unredeemable as Benson's long-lost love and Clohessy leers as the lascivious and conspicuously well-endowed gardener, while Buell, Mantell and Marrero loll in delicious bliss as, respectively, the drugged alcoholic, cross-dresser and sadist.

McNally has made the plays more topical by adding references to Oprah, Haagen-Dazs and other modern indulgences, with an especially wicked swipe at "Into the Woods." As America gets increasingly intolerant of excess and enamored of rehab clinics, "Bad Habits" may be more timely than it first appears - but, really, it's no more than a lark.

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