Gerald Nachman, Chronicle Theater Critic

4 Star Rating

THE LISBON TRAVIATA: Tragicomedy. By Terrence McNally. Starring Richard Thomas and Nathan Lane. Directed by John Tillinger. (At the Marines Memorial Theater, through November 4.)

In ''The Lisbon Traviata,'' Terrence McNally has written a wicked gay opera about obsessives, with duets in dialogue.

The tragicomedy, which opened Tuesday night in a West Coast premiere at the Marines Memorial Theater, focuses on three New York men in love with either Maria Callas or each other: Mendy's compulsion is opera; his operaphile friend Stephen's hang-up is Michael, roommate and ex-lover; Michael's obsession is cute young things, currently Paul, whose presence melodramatically leads to the play's operatic finale.

As in all opera, the driving force is possessive love, jealousy, pride, sex, retribution and madness, which at first takes the form of two operaholics dishing divas. But the nasty humor that drives the first act spins out of control in the second half, where nastier, more basic passions are released.

WORLD OF OBSESSION

McNally takes us inside the world of not only New York gay life, but also opera fiends -- or, indeed, obsessives of any kind: sports nuts, balletomanes, bird-watchers, foodies and film freaks are the same, one-upping each other with maniacal expertise.

Mendy and Stephen converse in a witty recherche shorthand composed of arcane facts, footnotes, famous dates and ferocious gossip, a kind of code that only the truly obsessed and over-informed can appreciate or decipher (Stephen: ''Caballe has a beautiful voice!'' Mendy: ''It's not enough'').

You needn't know opera to get the drift, but it helps to appreciate the special wicked spin that Richard Thomas (as Stephen) and Nathan Lane (repeating his original New York role as Mendy) put on every withering wisecrack; they speak in insult and innuendo.

A PASSION FOR CALLAS

It's a devastating, nonstop 50-minute lethal slice-and-dice session that leaves the stage littered with the bodies of Joan Sutherland, Beverly Sills, Marilyn Horne and Jessye Norman -- not to mention Angela Lansbury, whom Mendy takes unusual delight in ripping to shreds; but then he reserves a special revulsion for musicals.

Mendy, lonely and seeking love, channels his passion into opera -- Callas, mostly, and above all a recording of a 1958 performance in Lisbon that gives the play its title, an album he'd kill for.

As portrayed by Lane -- far too feverishly for me, but the opening-night house, well papered with opera buffs, was in stitches over every bon mot -- Mendy takes a sensual delight in mocking every singer who isn't Maria Callas, the real love of his life.

HYPED-UP DELIVERY

It's a memorable creation, but Lane has played the part so long that his hyped-up delivery anticipates howls -- the rhythm is overloaded with gag-retort-gag-retort that director John Tillinger allows to get sing-songy -- but then that's how it is with the Mendys of the world: thwarted, self-dramatizing performers all. Down deep (maybe not so deep), Mendy is a diva; he sure has Callas' temperament.

Thomas reveals a dramatic intensity that may shock old John-Boy fans when he turns from Mendy's Act II charming straight man, so to speak, into a pathetic, clingy lover trying to win back his physician roommate (Dan Butler) from the fair clutches of a waiter (Sean Michael O'Bryan as a gay ingenue), a scene that slowly turns ugly.

TWO ONE-ACTS IN ONE

''Traviata,'' in fact, is almost two one-acts tenuously tied together. The first is opera trivia, fun and games played out in Mendy's cozy apartment dedicated to the past (chaise longue, dramatic red draperies, Chinese screens, fringed shawls). Act II is theatrical travail performed in Michael's cool flat furnished in black leather, chrome and Mapplethorpe prints; designer Phillipp Jung deftly opposes two rival chic lifestyles.

The second act begins as a domestic squabble that gets out of hand and becomes more soap opera than the grand opera McNally intends. Some of it -- a gratuitous nude flash of a semi-aroused male, ogling of Blueboy hunks, graphic language (''You must see something in him -- it must be his brains or charm, it's certainly not his meat'') -- may make non-gays squirm some. A warm '30s family drama set in Appalachia it isn't.

Richard Thomas, who builds his character from despair into a seething rage in incremental notches, is the name, but Lane is the star. Lane, wearing a burgundy bathrobe with a huge handkerchief overflowing the pocket, flies into a series of snits and tantrums, a comic-operatic performance in which every opinion becomes a production number.

Florid of face and by turns exasperated, ecstatic and exhausted, Lane flings himself languidly on his sofa with fruity Capote-esque languor and wrings his hands grandly, ending a riposte with a disgusted roll of the eyes. He flounces, he pouts, he wails, he weeps, he minces, he bitches.

He wields a viper's tongue, and with a tossed-off afterthought like ''. . . walking his dog'' can demolish someone's latest ''trick.'' The play is as much a crash course in gaylic as opera (''Franco Corelli is a hump''), for McNally reveals the so-called gay esthetic with deadly accuracy, a juicy slice of gay life.

''I'm too much for most people,'' correctly confesses Mendy, whose wit has an Oscar Wildean sting: ''He has AIDS? From what -- watching 'Dynasty' reruns?'' . . . ''Debussy has balls,'' he says, ''he just doesn't wear them on his sleeve'' (Mendy sees opera in sexual terms and flings as opera).

NO LIFE BEYOND OPERA

When Mendy turns off the joke machine, McNally gives us a glimpse beyond the rapier tongue into the sad heart of a man with no life outside opera (''Opera doesn't reject me''), who delivers a touching eulogy to Callas.

Perhaps McNally should have further investigated Mendy's anguish instead of heating up a mawkish second-act potboiler with pained revelations, which plays like a TV movie with Thomas in the desperate-wife role begging a straying mate to ''hold me.''

When Mendy pops by for a moment in Act II, as a kind of link between scenes, you wish he'd stay around longer and quench the torrid living-room dying-swan scene with a few acid-drenched lines.

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