Rudnick Views World Through Retail-Colored Glasses

Love may keep us together, but what the world needs now is discount Versace and disco.

In Paul Rudnick's uplifting play, The New Century, now on view off-Broadway at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, four disparate people searching for a brighter future are brought together through the special magic of shopping and dancing.

Told as a series of four short plays, the production begins with Helene (a spirited Linda Lavin), a Jewish mother speaking to the Massapequa chapter of the ''Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, the Transgendered, the Questioning, the Curious, the Creatively Concerned and Others.'' She is proving herself as ''the most tolerant, and the most loving mother of all time,'' and she makes quite a convincing case.

Her three children have all come out to her with various sexual permutations, and she wishes they wouldn't be quite so honest. ''And I think, so many people's children, they hide everything. They live separate, secret lives. They're like strangers. I love those children.''

Lavin looks terrific in her sparkly champagne suit (costumes are by William Ivey Long) and perfectly coiffed white bob. Her delivery is spot-on, wringing humor and sympathy from every withering line and look.

Next we meet Mr. Charles (Peter Bartlett), one of Rudnick's recurring characters, who has been banned from New York City for being ''too gay,'' which is also the title of his South Florida cable-access show. Mr. Charles claims to be ''so deeply homosexual that, with just a glance, I can actually turn someone gay.''

Bartlett is swishy and fabulous in the role -- but the writing in this particular piece falls a bit flat. It's redeemed by a hilarious 60-second history of American gay theater and by the dim-witted, hunky presence of Shane (Mike Doyle), a young dancer Mr. Charles met at a nightclub and calls his ''ward.''

We are then introduced to Barbara Ellen Diggs (the superb Jayne Houdyshell), a craftsperson from Decatur, Ill., speaking to the Junior Chamber of Commerce. She shows off some of her creations, including microwave bonnets, toilet paper caddies, and a hand-crocheted toaster tuxedo.

Houdyshell takes potentially fey dialogue and invests it with real feeling. A discussion involving crafts becomes an especially poignant reminiscence about her son, a Broadway costume designer and memories of New York.

Helene, Mr. Charles, and Barbara Ellen all come together, for different contrived reasons, in a Manhattan maternity ward in the last piece. They are rather somberly contemplating what advice they would give the newborns when Shane bursts in, all manic energy, to tell them about his miraculous discovery -- there's an amazing store near the 9/11 ground zero called Century 21. ''It's like if Patti LuPone was a store,'' he says.

This new century may have its problems, Rudnick says, but turn up ''I Got the Music in Me'' and try some retail therapy. There ain't no stoppin' us now. (AP)