“Man on the Run”

Tom Doyle

Ballantine, $27

Rare is the artist whose cultural significance is such that a biography is devoted to a single decade in his or her life. But Paul McCartney, a popular-music phenomenon for a half-century and counting, has created a body of work deserving the same scrutiny as that of his former band, the Beatles.

At 72, Mr. McCartney, who has a house in Amagansett, continues to record and perform, the musician’s legendary work ethic undimmed by time. This week, he is in the midst of a world tour that, while partially postponed by illness earlier in the summer, is characterized by hours-long concerts and literally dozens of hit songs revered among all age groups and cultures.

As the title indicates, “Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s” focuses on the artist’s first post-Beatles decade. In it, the veteran music journalist Tom Doyle digs deeply into Mr. McCartney’s life and career, doing fans a great service as he unearths details even the most obsessive among them likely did not know.

Mr. Doyle uses interviews with his subject as well as Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, and former bandmates and others on the rock ’n’ roll scene to construct a thorough narrative of Mr. McCartney’s life and career in the 1970s, a period as prolific for the artist as the one that preceded it.

In Mr. Doyle’s telling, calamitous events serve as bookends for the decade. The first, of course, is the Beatles’ breakup, a years-in-the-making divorce that for a time left Mr. McCartney, then newly married to the American photographer Linda Eastman, shattered and secluded on a farm in remote Scotland, his sunny and cheerful public persona obscured by a deepening depression. “His often sleepless nights were spent shaking with anxiety,” Mr. Doyle writes, “while his days, which he was finding harder and harder to make it through, were characterized by heavy drinking and self-sedation with marijuana. He found himself chain-smoking his unfiltered, lung-blackening Senior Service cigarettes one after another after another.”

At the other end of the decade were two incidents: the first, a marijuana bust in January 1980, as Mr. McCartney and his band, Wings, landed in Tokyo for a tour of Japan. The artist was jailed for 10 days and the tour canceled, indirectly leading to the demise of Wings, which Mr. McCartney had first assembled in 1971. The other was John Lennon’s murder at the hands of a deranged fan in December 1980, a tragedy that rendered any true Beatles reunion impossible. “Always utterly thrown by death,” Mr. Doyle writes of Lennon’s murder, “McCartney was in a state of emotional paralysis.”

Between these bookends, Mr. Doyle writes, the shadow of Mr. McCartney’s former band, and particularly that of Lennon, his first and most significant artistic partner, loomed large. Millions yearned for a reunion of the Beatles, and, as revealed in “Man on the Run,” it was often a tantalizingly real possibility. While unlikely in the decade’s first years as the Beatles’ business affairs were slowly untangled in court and wounds of their acrimonious breakup gradually healed, Mr. Doyle documents occasional stirrings sprinkled throughout the decade, any of which might have blossomed into a full-fledged reunion.

Two other themes emerge through Mr. Doyle’s research. As the 1970s rose from the ashes of the previous, tumultuous decade, one in which the Beatles had delved deeply into mind-altering substances, Mr. McCartney in the new era is portrayed as a happy-go-lucky, whimsically stoned hippie. He documents the first “freewheeling, haphazard tour” undertaken by Mr. McCartney’s new band, which included his musically inexperienced spouse: “Everyone — musicians, roadies, kids, even dogs — was to pile into the vehicles and take off up the motorway, heading for university towns in search of somewhere to play.” Frequent marijuana busts and abundant music — sometimes self-indulgent and even silly but very often brilliant and enduring — further illustrate the theme.

The other is the inherent tension presented by Mr. McCartney’s twin desires to both be a member of a band, as he had with the Beatles, and simultaneously the unquestioned leader of said group. Surely, he had earned the right to direct the proceedings of his new creative vehicle. But, as it had among his collaborators in the Beatles, Mr. McCartney’s exacting direction rankled his new bandmates, often to a point of no return.

“Behind their happy hippie-family facade,” Mr. Doyle writes, “the discontent had been stewing in Wings for some time.” A quote from Denny Laine, the band’s longest-serving member, illustrates the point: “Let’s be honest — he wanted to be in a band in a sense. But he would still have the final call.” The lineup was ever shifting, no lead guitarist or drummer lasting more than a few years. While Mr. McCartney assembled many fine, hard-rocking iterations of Wings, the frequent turnover, and complaints of inadequate wages and the spartan living conditions on Mr. McCartney’s farm, hindered the effort to realize a “band” in the ideal sense — an egalitarian unit with common attitudes, goals, and, critically, respect.

Yet the record is clear. For all the dismissals of Mr. McCartney’s music as saccharine, nursery-rhyme fluff — “Muzak to my ears” was Lennon’s caustic assessment in an early post-Beatles song of his own — the artist recovered from the Beatles’ disbanding and produced another body of work that surpassed that of all but a handful of his contemporaries. Four decades on, the seemingly ageless Mr. McCartney has been performing a dozen or so of these post-Beatles hits, among a nearly 40-song set, on the aforementioned tour.

The decade, Mr. McCartney tells Mr. Doyle, represented achievement. “ ‘Achieving the impossible, really,’ he emphasized, before remembering the words of those critics who rejected the idea that he would ever create anything that could be held up against the golden light of the Beatles. ‘It had always been, “You can’t do that, that’s not gonna be possible.” I slightly believed that, and thought, Yeah, but I want to be in music, so I’m gonna have to do something, and this is my best shot.’ ”

“ ‘And it was a wacky thing,’ ” Mr. McCartney summarized. “ ‘But, come on, man, we were hippies.’ ”

Two at Drawing Room

Concurrent shows of works on paper by Sue Heatley and sculpture by Adrian Nivola will be on view at the Drawing Room in East Hampton from tomorrow through Aug. 31.

Ms. Heatley, who lives in East Hampton, was influenced by the intense color and visual stimuli she encountered while in India in 2012. Her new work expands on her longstanding interest in patterns and textures with a vibrant palette, sweeping lines, looping archways, and ornamental fields activating the picture plane.

In his new body of work, Mr. Nivola has been inspired by the history of aviation and the passion and ingenuity of the earliest aeronauts. His constructions combine wire, string, linen, sheet metal, and found objects to pay homage, on the scale of model airplanes, to the aviation pioneers.

Group Show at Ille Arts

Ille Arts in Amagansett will present “Somatic,” a group exhibition organized by George Negroponte, from Saturday through Aug. 19. A reception will take place Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

The exhibition will include work by James Angell, Matthew Bliss, E.L. Brown, James Greco, Bryan Hunt, Ilse Murdock, Joni Wehrli, and Lucy Winton. According to Mr. Negroponte, himself an artist, the exhibitors “are aesthetes scavenging reverential traditions for more fuel; alert and mindful that making one’s mark on art is very risky business.”

Benefit for Wildlife

Get Wild, a benefit for the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center, will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. on Aug. 9 at the North Haven home of the artists April Gornik and Eric Fischl. Hosted by Isaac Mizrahi, the event will honor the Marder family, Jane Gill, and Dr. Jonathan Turetsky and the Veterinary Clinic of East Hampton for their work with animals.

The highlight of the event is the rescue center’s first art auction, for which online bidding began July 23 and will continue through the day of the event. The auction includes works by Roy Lichtenstein, Ross Bleckner, Cindy Sherman, Mary Heilmann, Malcolm Morley, Keith Sonnier, Billy Sullivan, and Ms. Gornik and Mr. Fischl, among others. The auction can be previewed at paddle8.com.

The evening will also include a live auction of unique lots. Founded in 1997 in Hampton Bays, the rescue center is dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of injured wildlife on the East End.

New Gallery at Red Horse

Studio 11, a new exhibition space at the Red Horse shopping plaza in East Hampton, will open tomorrow with a show of sculpture by Steven Miller. A reception will take place tomorrow from 6 to 8 p.m., and the work will be on view through Sept. 14.

Mr. Miller, who divides his time between East Hampton and New York City, works primarily in steel, creating abstract geometric columns, reliefs, and layered compositions that suggest Russian Constructivism and the Bauhaus. He exhibited most recently as part of the Moby Project, a group show held last summer at the Mulford Farm.

Olko Features the Sea

“The Call of the Sea,” a show of work by Christine Matthai and Kia Andrea Pedersen, will be on view at Monika Olko Gallery in Sag Harbor from Saturday through Aug. 22. A reception for the artists, both of whom live on Shelter Island, will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Ms. Matthai took up photography full time more than a decade ago, focusing primarily on nature. Her recent works explore the emergence of life and light from the darkness of the sea.

Ms. Pedersen is a printmaker, painter, sculptor, designer, and avid sailor. The paintings in this exhibition suggest the motion of waves and drops of water scattered by the wind.

New at Lawrence

“Serene Refuge,” an exhibition of paintings by Suzanne LaFleur, will open Saturday at Lawrence Fine Art in East Hampton and remain on view through Aug. 18. A reception will be held Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

Born in Southampton and educated in New York City, Ms. LaFleur spent 20 years living in Lebanon, Kuwait, and France. Memory, place, and nature are integral to her most recent work, which is inspired by the landscape of the East End, where she still spends summers.

In one monumental painting, also titled “Serene Refuge,” the composition evokes, though fluid swatches of blue and green, an aerial view of the wetlands and water of the region.

“Toxic Waste” at Blumenthal

Blumenthal East Hampton is presenting “Toxic Waste,” a solo show of new paintings by Kasper Sonne, a Danish-born artist who lives and works in New York City, through Aug. 17. The exhibition includes three large chemical paintings from the artist’s TXC series and a video titled “Bad Chemistry.”

The new works are based on a concept of building up and breaking down. Mr. Sonne begins a TXC painting by using industrial paint and a roller to create a monochromatic surface. He then adds chemicals to the painting’s surface that initiate a process of reaction. Pigments shift in response to the chemicals, and eventually, as the chemicals dry, tiny crystals form.

Garden-Focused Workshops

Lois Bender, an artist and designer whose company, GardenSpirits NY, focuses on gardens and nature, is teaching several workshops this summer on the East End.

“Gardens, Watercolor, and Afternoon Tea,” a program at Guild Hall, will take place tomorrow, Friday, Aug. 8, and Aug. 15 at the Hedges Inn’s patio and garden at 74 James Lane in East Hampton. The cost is $100 per class, $85 for Guild Hall members, and refreshments are included. Registration is through guildhall.org.

Ms. Bender will also lead a multigenerational workshop at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton next Thursday morning from 10 to 11:30. Parents, grandparents, and children have been invited to make sketchbook journals in which they will use watercolor crayons to capture leaves, flowers, and branches. The class is recommended for children ages 3 to 14, accompanied by a parent or caregiver. The cost is $30.

An ongoing watercolor class at Bridge Gardens takes place Fridays from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The fee is $45 per class. Registration for the latter two workshops is by email to loisbender@ gardenspiritsny.com or by phone at 212-249-6225.

Comics and Superheroes

“My Hero II,” an exhibition that pays tribute to comics and superheroes, will open Monday at the Design Studio in Bridgehampton and remain on view through Sept. 8. The show will include a Batman created by Mitch McGee in cut and layered Birch wood; “Battle of the Sexes,” a hyper-realistic look at the superhero lunchboxes of the past by Peter and Madeline Powell; Oliver Peterson’s mixed-media portrayal of the Justice League, and Don Morris’s comic book constructions.

A reception will take place Aug. 9 from 4 to 7 p.m.

“Pollock’s Champions”

The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center will open “Pollock’s Champions” today, running through Oct. 31. The exhibition will chart the influence of Peggy Guggenheim, Betty Parsons, and Sidney Janis, three dealers who showed Jackson Pollock’s work throughout his life.

Bobbi Coller, the guest curator, will examine their roles in furthering both the artist’s reputation and his career. 

Pollock’s dealers were friends and associates who promoted his talent and his art. The exhibition includes telegrams, handwritten notes, sales records, bro­chures, and images, including a drawing Pollock made for Parsons, a gouache by Parsons herself, Andy Warhol’s portrait of Janis, prints by Pollock, and photographs from the Pollock-Krasner House collection.

A reception and panel discussion with relatives of the dealers will be held on Sunday from 5 to 7 p.m. Admission is $5, free for members of the center.

Clothesline Sale

The Clothesline Art Sale, a Guild Hall tradition since 1946, will take place Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nearly 400 artists enter the sale each year, with works priced from $50 to $2,000. Proceeds are split between the artists and Guild Hall.

The 47th annual Artists of the Springs Invitational Exhibit will open at Ashawagh Hall tomorrow and remain on view through Aug. 17. An opening reception will be held tomorrow from 5 to 8 p.m., and the exhibition’s curator, Sue Ferguson Gussow, will lead a tour of the show on Aug. 16 from 4 to 5 p.m.

Ms. Gussow, a painter and professor emerita of Cooper Union, where she still teaches a seminar, selected 125 artists for the exhibition. She looked at the websites of more than 300 artists, which she chose from a master list of all the artists invited and some suggested, but not invited, since 2000.

“There’s a lot of good work,” she said during a conversation at her house in Amagansett last week. “One interesting thing is that even though you limit the size of work to 25 by 25 inches and ask artists to keep the prices low, nobody reaches for the bottom of the barrel. There are beautiful drawings and small paintings. Most artists want to show themselves off well in this exhibition.”

The exhibition originated informally in 1958 as “Art on the Wall,” an outdoor show at Ashawagh Hall that usually coincided, as it still does, with the Fisherman’s Fair. The Invitational officially began in 1967 and has grown over the years from a handful of participants to a broad survey of work by East End artists.

Ms. Gussow purchased her house in Amagansett in 1973 primarily because it had a north-facing garage that would work as a studio. But she first visited the area in the 1950s. “I grew up in the world of Abstract Expressionism,” she recalled. “My cousin was a friend of Jackson Pollock’s and got married on Pollock and Lee Krasner’s porch. So as a teenager I already knew that world.”

Her neighbor in Amagansett was John Opper, a member of the New York School whose work was represented in major museums across the country. “John and his wife were mentors,” she said. “I remember John was in the invitational for many years. Once I ran into him there and he said to the people at the desk, ‘Why isn’t Sue ever invited?’ He said very nice things about me, but I didn’t get invited then, either.” She was finally selected by Arthur Byron Phillips during the 1980s and has participated in most, but not all, since then.

When Ms. Gussow was first asked if she were willing to curate this year’s show, she hesitated. “It’s a job one takes on a little reluctantly, in part because of the time involved. Without Beth Meredith, who handles all the administrative work cheerfully and efficiently, I wouldn’t have accepted.”

It was several months before she was officially asked to be this year’s curator. “I remembered how I had desired to be invited and hadn’t been, and I thought of a number of people who were first-rate artists but were seldom, if ever, selected. So this would be a chance to include them.”

A figurative painter, Ms. Gussow has taught, lectured, and served as visiting critic at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, the Maryland Art Institute, the Frick Collection, and the Royal Academy of Art School of Architecture in Copenhagen, among others. She is represented in such public collections as the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design, the Dallas Museum of Fine Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Frick Collection Archive, and in many notable private collections.

“It’s a delicate balance making the selections for the exhibition,” she said. “I was able to include some young artists, but I didn’t want to shut out artists who have been here for a long time. It’s an excellent idea to change curators each year so that the roster doesn’t stagnate.”

The exhibition will be open Sundays through Fridays from 1 to 5 p.m., and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fifty percent of sales from the exhibition will benefit the Springs Improvement Society’s Scholarship Fund, which in turn aids East Hampton High School graduates from Springs who are going on to college. Proceeds from the Fisherman’s Fair, which will take place on the Ashawagh Hall grounds on Aug. 9, are used to help maintain the hall.

Humor, music, and fashion are on Guild Hall’s agenda this weekend. David Sedaris, an NPR humorist and best-selling author, will bring his trenchant wit and incisive social observations to the John Drew Theater Sunday evening at 8.

Mr. Sedaris’s views on the human condition have appeared in print in “Naked,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim,” “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” and “Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls.” A book signing will follow the show. Prime orchestra tickets are $150, $145 for members; orchestra seats are $65 and $63, and balcony tickets are $50 and $48.

Maureen McGovern, an award-winning singer and actress, will celebrate iconic American singer-songwriters Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Southampton Arts Center as part of Guild Hall’s Songbook Salon series.

Ms. McGovern, whose recording of “The Morning After” from “The Poseidon Adventure” earned an Academy Award and a Grammy nomination, will present an entertaining and introspective program including early works by James Taylor, Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Carole King, and Randy Newman, among others. Tickets are $60, $58 for members.

Stacey Bendet, C.E.O. and creative director of Alice + Olivia, a New York-based clothing company, will be interviewed by Cristina Cuomo, editor of Manhattan and Beach magazines, on Sunday morning at 11 at Guild Hall as part of its Conversations With Fashion Luminaries series.

Founded in 2002, Alice + Olivia has grown to a full lifestyle collection including ready-to-wear, gowns, shoes, and handbags. It has 20 boutiques in the United States and abroad. Tickets are $15, $13 for members.

Guild Hall’s busy week will culminate on Friday, Aug. 8, with its summer benefit. The event will begin with a preview of “Celebrating Robert Motherwell: The East Hampton Years, 1944-1952” from 5 to 7 p.m. Cocktails, dinner, dancing, and a live auction will follow at a private home in Bridgehampton. There are various ticket options, including exhibition preview and cocktails only and dancing and dessert only. Prices range from $50 to $2,500; complete information is available at guildhall.org.

The Watermill Center is presenting the Scaler Summer Lecture Series, which features notable speakers from the arts, humanities, and science, through Aug. 14.

The next program, “Music and Memory,” will take place Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Daniel J. Levitin, a neuroscientist and writer, will discuss the art and science of writing music with Daniel Knox, a composer and songwriter.

Next Thursday, also at 7:30, Charles Ross, an artist who tests the limits of digital media, will talk with Joe Thompson, director of MASS MoCA, the Massachusetts art center where Mr. Ross will have a solo exhibition in 2015.

On Aug. 12, Robert Wilson, artistic director of the center, will discuss the language of creativity with the architect Daniel Libeskind, master planner of the World Trade Center redevelopment.

The series will conclude Aug. 14 with a lecture by Glenn H. Shepard Jr., an anthropologist and ethnobotanist, on shamanism, sanitation, and development among indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon.

Reservations are free but required and may be made at watermillcenter. org.

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will present Carlos Mencia on Monday at 8 p.m. as part of its Comedy Club series. A performance at an open mike night at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles launched Mr. Mencia on the path to a successful stand-up career, a popular series called “Mind of Mencia” on Comedy Central, comedy specials on HBO and Comedy Central, and film and television appearances.

Born in Honduras as the 17th of 18 children, Mr. Mencia was raised in the Maravilla Projects in Los Angeles. His comedy is often political and engages issues of race, culture, criminal justice, and social class. He has recently returned to his stand-up roots, touring the country with his newest material. Tickets are $69 to $89 and are available at the box office or baystreet.org.

“Jazz Goes to the Movies,” a free program of Hollywood film music performed by four East End jazz artists, will be presented Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Montauk Library.

Vanessa Trouble is a jazz vocalist who performs regularly in Manhattan and on the East End, including, last Saturday, at the Parrish Art Museum’s members’ reception in Water Mill.

Bob Stern, a full-time Montauk resident, has been playing the violin for 50 years, in styles ranging from Baroque to country to jazz.

Jane Hastay is a pianist, musical director of cabaret shows and theatrical productions, and director or music and organist at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk.

Peter Martin Weiss will complete the foursome on bass. An established bassist on the New York jazz scene, he lives in East Hampton with his wife, Ms. Hastay. They often perform as a duo on the East End and co-host the Bridgehampton Museum’s Parlor Jazz Series.

The Hamptons International Film Festival will present two more films before the end of the summer, Rory Kennedy’s “The Last Days in Vietnam” and “The Overnighters” from Jesse Moss.

Ms. Kennedy, who brought the film “Ethel,” about her mother, to Guild Hall two years ago, will discuss “The Last Days” with Alec Baldwin and her subject, Stuart Herrington, after its Aug. 16 screening. The film focuses on a small group of Americans, alone in Saigon as North Vietnamese troops began to close in on the city. With evacuation delayed by Congressional gridlock and an ambassador not grasping their peril or that of their South Vietnamese allies and co-workers, they took unsanctioned action to save as many of their lives as possible.

Described as a “modern-day ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ ” Mr. Moss’s film follows migrant workers to Williston, N.D., where the hydraulic fracturing work they hoped for does not materialize except for a few, who have nowhere to stay. Jay Reinke, a Lutheran pastor, takes them in, converting his church into a dormitory. “The Overnighters” won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival for intuitive filmmaking.

Both films will begin at 7:30 p.m. at Guild Hall.  Tickets are $23 and $21 for members and are available at guildhall.org or at the Guild Hall box office.

Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist who captured the world’s imagination in 1973 with his walk between the two 110-story towers of the World Trade Center, will repeat his elevated stroll at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton at 6 p.m. next Thursday, the 40th anniversary of his historic feat.

Titled “Look Up,” his performance will use the same wire, tensioning device, and balancing pole and will cover the same distance, but at a height of 20 feet instead of almost 1,400.

“A year ago I thought I needed to do something to celebrate the anniversary,” Mr. Petit said during a conversation on Monday at the Springs house of Kathy O’Donnell, the event’s producer. “I needed to be on a wire.”

He discussed his desire to do a performance with Ted Hartley, a friend and executive producer of the program. “ ‘Come and see LongHouse Reserve,’ ”  Mr. Hartley said. “We visited a few other places, but the minute I saw LongHouse, I fell in love with it.”

The site dictated the height of the wire. “The pond was so beautiful I wanted to walk over it,” Mr. Petit said, “and to one side was a majestic oak with a fork in it at 20 feet, which was perfect for my departure.” Since there was no tree on the other side of the pond, a simple X-like construction will be the arrival point.

“In 1971 I was a dot in the sky,” Mr. Petit said. “This time people will be able to see my face and movements. It will be almost like a little garden party, very simple, but I have developed a theatrical presentation.” The walk will be accompanied by dramatic readings by Melissa Leo, an Academy Award-winning actress, from Mr. Petit’s book “To Reach the Clouds,” and Paul Winter, a seven-time Grammy winner, on the soprano saxophone. Mr. Petit hopes to have Mr. Winter floating on the pond in a little raft.

Though the World Trade Center walk is his most famous, he does not consider it the most important thing he has accomplished. “What I do is never a stunt or trying to break a record. To me, a small, beautifully done performance is equal in artistic quality to the highest towers.” His first major illegal walk was between the towers of Notre Dame in Paris, and it occupies a special place in his heart.

Asked if he would do an illegal walk at this point in his life, he said, “My heart has not changed. I still don’t believe in knocking on the door of the administration to do something beautiful and exciting. When the door is locked, my heart still imagines me doing more illegal walks. But now, if I’m on a rooftop in the moonlight, I would probably be shot.”

The gardens will open at 4:30 p.m., and the program will begin at 5. Tickets range in price from $125 for pond-side seating to $500 for lawn seating and a champagne supper at a private home with Mr. Petit, Ms. Leo, and Mr. Winter. Tickets at $1,000 also include a signed copy of Mr. Petit’s book and a poster, as well as V.I.P. seating. The $40 lawn tickets are sold out. Information and tickets are available at longhouse.org.

Mr. Petit will also give a lecture on his new book, “Creativity: The Perfect Crime,” at the Maidstone Club in East Hampton on Sunday at 6 p.m. A book signing will follow the talk.

“Clever Little Lies,” the new play by Joe DiPietro, is described as a “new comedy” on the cover of the playbill, which is accurate to an extent. But this play has a dramatic spine that takes the audience on an unexpected journey, one that had the house silent, on the edge of their seats, at the end on opening night. That is, until the final blackout, and the bravos rang out.

Mr. DiPietro titillates us into his story, giving the flash of a frothy sex comedy, but this is anything but.

The play starts with Bill Sr. (Greg Mullavey) and Bill Jr. (Jim Stanek), sitting in a locker room after playing tennis. Senior has beaten Junior, an unusual occurrence. We learn that Junior is having an affair, despite the fact that his wife has just given birth to their first baby. That is as much about the plot as you’re going to get here.

Marlo Thomas, who plays Alice, the mother, is the star on the playbill, the name that draws, and is a star in every sense of the word. She is also a superb actress. She has a droll style, and an intuitive stage sense, with great timing.

The cast around her is superb. Mr. Mullavey, Alice’s husband, is a great talent. Besides his incredible résumé, he teaches the Meisner technique at Michael Howard’s Studio in New York and is reminiscent of Sandy Meisner, who developed the technique in response to method acting to emphasize instead the “reality of doing.”

Mr. Stanek as Billy created the part in the first incarnation of this play, as did the rest of the cast, at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick last fall. David Saint, the director, was wise to keep him on board. He gives us a young man who is at turns callow, then loving, then simply torn as to where to turn.

Kate Wetherhead is so beautiful as Jane, the wife on whom Billy is cheating. She plays the role with vulnerability yet strength. And what a voice. When she sings to her baby, it is the sound of a perfect silver bell. I hope she has a place to stay in New York. She is going to be there quite a while.

Let’s talk about David Saint’s direction. Wow.

A director is a complex player in theater. He or she chooses a play to work on, casts it, puts together a creative team, and takes the piece from reading to full production. Mr. Saint has been the artistic director of the George Street Playhouse for 15 years. If this is any sign of what George Street is doing these days, we should all take a detour to New Jersey to see what else he has up his sleeve.

The choice by Josh Gladstone, the John Drew Theater’s artistic director, to bring in a new work that is being fine-tuned is a good one, what with the paucity of rehearsal time under the union contract. The audience is, in a sense, getting the best of both worlds: a new work with a creative team that has been through the process with the play once before.

The design team Mr. Saint put together is brilliant. Yoshi Tanokura’s set, with its moving parts and integration of film, blends perfectly with Christopher J. Bailey’s lighting design. Scott Killian’s original music and sound design are equally strong in blending and moving the piece, and Esther Arroyo’s costume design perfectly captures the characters Mr. DiPietro has created.

So, you can pay Broadway prices when this show opens there — and that looks like where it’s bound, given that the packed house included Jordan Roth of Jujamcyn Theaters fame and other Broadway producers — or you can pay the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall’s very generous prices, if you are lucky enough to get a ticket. The choice is yours, and that is not a clever little lie.

“Clever Little Lies” runs a snappy hour and a half with no intermission. It plays Tuesdays through Sundays until Aug. 3, with evening performances at 8 and matinee performances Sundays at 3 p.m. There is no evening performance tomorrow or on Aug. 3.