Wrong Mountain, David Hirson's ambitious but ailing new Broadway play which opened January 13, has its own "bête".

He's obscure poet Henry Dennett, astonishingly played by Ron Rifkin, who like some schoolmarmish, smalltime variation of Shakespeare's King Lear, rails and rants against the kind of financially-rewarding establishment success that he's never even tried to attain.

The only respite that the poet - and, for that matter, the audience - gets from Dennett's tirade against everything he's not comes only after a play he's written on a dare becomes an unexpected hit. Suddenly, Dennett becomes kinder and he seems to find a peace of mind that has always eluded him. In fact, a [...]