If the West Side stadium is ever actually built, someone might consider staging as an opening-night event, a dramatic portrayal of the weeks leading up to its approval. The story line is compelling: Two spendthrift politicians delay a vote for increasingly bizarre reasons, insisting they are weighing the merits even as they drop hints that the proposal is doomed. Billionaires on both sides spend millions to publicize their views. Angry laborers grumble. Lobbyists cash in. The Olympics, the Super Bowl, the Jets – each hangs in the balance.

As the vote approaches, the two men show less and less concern about the coherence of their public statements. Like twin King Lears, they come across as ignorant of the frenzy their comments cause. They worry about public financing even while approving hundreds of millions of dollars for phantom projects elsewhere in the state. One makes repeated allusions to a quid pro quo for Lower Manhattan even while insisting the two projects are unrelated. The other denies he is looking for a trade-off one week before suggesting he is.

This drama, a potential tragedy to those who have spent a fortune to block or to build the $2 billion stadium, becomes comic to most everyone else. Indeed, it seemed to take on the qualities of a farce last week, when the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, assumed the role of chief obstructer from the majority leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno, a Republican. Fierce political enemies most days, the two men switched roles sometime between Wednesday and Friday morning. They seemed to relish the moment.

Last Wednesday, Mr. Bruno came up with the idea of a public meeting on the stadium, four years after its proposal and one day after tabling a vote on $300 million in state subsidies. At the meeting, representatives for Messrs. Bruno and Silver instead approved $235 million in borrowing for “various projects.” Two days later, Mr. Silver was in the driver’s seat, raising new objections to the stadium project five days before he is expected to table a vote on subsidies for it at the next meeting of the Public Authorities Control Board. He said the city’s failure to build an Olympic village could also tie up an Olympic bid. And, he said, Athens built its stadium in the months leading up to the 2004 games.

Mr. Silver’s new concerns came the same day he delivered a speech on Lower Manhattan redevelopment to the Association for a Better New York. Mr. Silver said in the speech that no construction in the city should take precedence over downtown and called on the state to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to move the project forward. The same morning, Mr. Silver was to deliver the speech, the Daily News ran a front-page story about a letter the chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Peter Ueberroth, wrote to Mr. Silver earlier this month.

The letter, identical copies of which were sent to Governor Pataki and Mr. Bruno, said a vote against the stadium would imperil New York City’s chances of winning the 2012 Olympics. Mr. Silver said the letter had been tied up in an Anthrax screening facility. He said he never read it. A spokesman for Mr. Silver contradicted the claim. Mr. Silver also questioned the timing of the letter, suggesting it had been leaked to coincide with his speech. “I really do question the timing of the release of that information today,” Mr. Silver said.

Still, the speech bore the marks of a public negotiation. Mr. Silver asked the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is run in part by appointees of Mr. Pataki, to return at least a portion of the money it receives each month from the leaseholder of the World Trade Center site, Lawrence Silverstein. A spokesman for the Port Authority, Steve Coleman, said the agency is already spending more than Mr. Silver is requesting. Mr. Coleman’s comments seemed to presage yet another delay over the stadium.

A spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee, Darryl Seibel, reiterated the sentiments expressed by Mr. Ueberroth. “What we know is that the NYC 2012 plan, which has been submitted to the International Olympic Committee, calls for the Olympic stadium to be on the West Side, and that is the plan that the IOC voters are being asked to consider,” Mr. Siebel said. “We think it’s an outstanding plan. They’ve developed a terrific bid, and we agree that it’s critical for all the approvals to be in place for the stadium before the IOC vote in July.”

Despite the concerns of Messrs. Ueberroth and Siebel, Messrs. Bruno and Silver have gladly assumed the role, up to now at least, as potential spoilers. If Mr. Silver tables a vote on the stadium Wednesday, he and Mr. Bruno will have to vote up or down on the project at the next meeting in June. The drama between now and then will only intensify, thanks to the theatrical sense of the two legislative leaders. Even after suggesting new reason to delay a vote, Mr. Silver said, speaking of the International Olympic Committee: “I don’t know why they are so focused on the stadium.”

Mr. McGuire is The New York Sun’s correspondent in Albany.