"Miss Rowlands, as she has shown inother films directed by her husband, can be incomparably funny while coming apart at the seams," wroteJanet Maslin in the New York Times when Opening Night-which premiered in 1978 and then didn't open-wasrevived in New York last year. Gena Rowlands' Myrtle Gordon is, in some ways, her Mabel Longhetti withthe benefit of an artistic outlet: a celebrated actress on the verge of a breakdown with only her ownresources to pull her through. Here the men are literally the producers (Myrtle's producer-husband, playedby Paul Stewart), directors (Ben Gazzara as the play's director Manny Victor) and intimate adversaries(Cassavetes as Myrtle's co-star Maurice Aarons) they were figuratively in earlier films. Challenged with aplay about aging called "The Second Woman," Myrtle is faced with casting out her own youth; the image of ayoung fan who is killed by a car outside the theater becomes first a haunting presence, then a useful devicefor the actress. It is Myrtle's, and Cassavetes', genius that this "woman's issue," the dread of aging,becomes an artist's issue-and an artist's tool for growth in an extraordinary process to which we areprivy. Cassavetes filmed the play's rehearsals in front of a live audience, lending us a camaraderie withthat audience and the film a Pirandellian hyperreality that is beautifully played for its many layers. AsMyrtle reworks the play according to her own dictates, sometimes with hilarious results, are wewitnessing Cassavetes' mythical process of "improvisation," or Rowlands performing a Cassavetes script,once again cleverly written to sound improvised? The film resonates with this uncertainty, and thecast-including Joan Blondell as the shrewdly sympathetic playwright and Zohra Lampert as Manny's softlysavvy wife-along with it. Note: Opening Night is repeated Saturday, November11 at 7:00.