Bauer

San Francisco Playhouse presents "Bauer," a world premiere from director Bill English, fresh off his excellent "Jerusalem." At play's open, Rudolf Bauer ("Mad Men's" Ronald Guttman), one of the 20th century's most influential artists, lives in isolation and hasn't started a new painting in more than a decade.

He haunts his disused studio and bickers with his stalwart wife Louise (Playhouse co-founder Susi Damilano) while waiting for the arrival of his old patron/old flame. It's enough to make you wonder if those crooked retirement homes aren't such a bad option late in life after all.

If you're not already familiar with the real Bauer, then the play bearing his name might be slow to catch fire for you. We get some early glimpses of his vibrant paintings (projected onto the stage walls), but they're fleeting.

Without knowing much about Bauer the artist, it's harder to be invested in Bauer the character. This puts the play in serious danger of just being three testy people annoying each other for 90 minutes.

Pregnant dialogue: "Facts are selfish."

It looks good. The set's canvas-blank walls and ceiling (spruced up by a few Robert Wiene angles) are startling. The empty studio is Bauer's subconscious as well as a prison, a tomb and a madhouse for him. Guttman and Damilano are also canvases, muffled by Tatjana Genser's nondescript grey and beige costumes.

Stacy Ross, as Countess Hilla Rebay, wears a mournful blue outfit that struggles to inject color back into Bauer's torpid viewpoint. Imagine if "The Wizard of Oz" stayed sepia all the way through.

So design-wise it's great, particularly the device of projecting Bauer's art, memories and emotions onto the sets. But these characters are tough nuts to crack. If we were cultured enough to qualify for this job in the first place we'd probably feel Bauer's pain before we even sat down, but we're not. He's a stranger.

We're told he's a great painter who never paints. That's hard to believe. Guttman plays closed-off frustration quite well, but that's not always a positive thing in this play. Damilano actually cuts a more compelling figure. Her reserved strength becomes unexpectedly appealing. But she's a smaller role.

Pregnant dialogue: "These bygones refuse to be gone."

But then, something like a lightning bolt hits Guttman out of the blue midway through and, by God, he's alive, alive! Re-declaring his allegiance to the artistic movement he helped create, Bauer cries out that art shouldn't imitate the real world. It should just be color and shape and expression and art all in itself. (There it is: your 10-second rejoinder the next time anyone complains that modern art doesn't "look like anything.")

He sounds good. He sounds right. Once the nut cracks, Guttman really is the intriguing, impassioned protagonist we wanted all along.

"Bauer" has something of a political subtext too. 20th century Europe gave us Modernism, but it also gave us fascism. (Bauer spent some years in a Nazi concentration camp thanks to his subversive paintings.) The play reminds us how disconcerting that is, but it also affirms the final victory of art over small minds. This dialogue, when it comes, is more than just good. It's powerful.

Pregnant dialogue: "'Why' is an impotent question."

We're not going to lie here (because that would be libel and we'd have to sue ourselves): "Bauer" isn't quite the play we wish it was. But neither is it an injustice to its subject. It's a very sincere love letter to a man and a time and an idea, and it's hard not to admire what it says. It's a flawed masterpiece, but there's still a future for it.

The show is good for: Anyone who always wondered what the big deal is about those artists.

The show is not good for: Presumably, anyone who didn't bother to read this far.

"Bauer" plays through April 19 at the San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St in San Francisco. For tickets and information, call 415-677-9596 or go to SfPlayhouse.org