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IN his latest small-scale, politically themed effort at the Flea Theater, A.R. Gurney seems to want to have it both ways.
Set "sometime" in the not-too-distant future, "Post Mortem" depicts the efforts of a professor (Tina Benko) and her student (Christopher Kromer) to rescue Gurney's final play - also titled "Post Mortem" - from the censorship oblivion to which it had been consigned by a right-wing, repressive government.
When the play is finally unleashed upon the world, its arrival does nothing less than to bring about "peace among nations."
That this is a joke is emphasized by the playwright's jibes at his own expense, from the description of him in a reference book titled "Minor Figures in American Drama" as the author of "middle-class comedies of manners," to (fictitious) accounts of his torrid affairs with Cameron Diaz and both Hepburns, Kate and Audrey.
The prolific playwright, who lately has alternated those "comedies of manners" with politically charged satires like "Mrs. Farnsworth" (about a woman's supposed affair with a young, hard-drinking George Bush, which also played The Flea), clearly has valid points to make about the current social, political and religious climate.
But this jokey, meta-theatrical enterprise is ultimately too self-referential and broad to have much of a satirical impact. As directed by Jim Simpson, it plays - even at a scant 75 minutes - more like a distended sketch.
Not helping matters is a late-in-the-play appearance of the chirpy hostess (Shannon Burkett) of a literary seminar who delivers a long, unfunny diatribe about cellphones that seems to belong in another play.
POST MORTEMFlea Theater, 41 White St. (212) 352-3101. Through Dec. 9.
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