WHEN BEING A STARVING WRITER IS NO LONGER ROMANTIC

Austin Pendleton’s breathtaking performance and Ira Lewis’s penetrating script make Chinese Coffee, with all its flaws, a most worthwhile outing. In fact, at $18 a ticket, this show, directed by Louise Lasser, is all but mandatory viewing for lovers of personal, intimate theater, as well as for any intellectually-minded individual with artistic aspirations. Alone in his shabby Greenwich Village studio at 1:15 in the morning, 51-year-old photographer Jacob (“Jake”) Manheim (Mr. Pendleton) seems restless; a knock on the door heralds the arrival of his 44-year-old starving-writer friend Harry Levine (Sean Walsh). Harry’s come to collect the $473 that Jake owes him. He’s also come to ask what Jake thought of his new novel, the manuscript of which he’d given to him sometime earlier. What follows is a loving but brutal dissection of these two intelligent and talented failures and their relationship.