Show Bet

Photo Finish. Peter Ustinov, writer, director and star of this comedy, remains mute for the first five minutes of it. Propped up by a pillow, he half-sits, half-lies in bed, a snow wreath of great age framing his petulantly mischievous features. He looks like a cross between a grumpy polar bear and a tipsy Greek philosopher. As his equally ancient wife ("a nagger's nagger") frets, scolds, and pokes at him, Ustinov's countenance becomes a weather map of changing frustrations. His eyes ski off at rakish tangents. His jaw chomps erratically over what could be a mouthful of elastics. His arms and fingers do little arcs and spins like dangling mobiles. Even after Ustinov begins to speak, these body tics go on, and it is a tribute to Ustinov as a mugger's mugger that he gets laughs out of them long after the novelty has worn off.

The novelty of the play wears more slowly but less well. It is Ustinov's clever conceit to do a kind of drawing-room philosopher's Ages of Man: Old Sam (Ustinov) at 80 is confronted with himself at 60, 40, 20, and even as a baby. The four grown Sams share the stage together, and with all the amusing ironies of hindsight and foreknowledge relive key episodes in their communal life. Sam at 20 (John Horton) is an ardent lyric poet and marathon runner, at 40 (Donald Davis) a disgruntled fictional crafts man of obscure worst-sellers, at 60 (Dennis King) a rich, popular hack novelist and flagging voluptuary. Old Sam is still trying to learn the lesson of his life as the four Sams discuss marriage, mistresses, goals and the gulf between father and son, a relationship vividly accented by Paul Rogers' portrayal of a paternal Victorian martinet. Ustinov's conclusions are not startling: that young radicals become old conservatives, that sons understand and forgive their fathers too late; that marriage is more a football, than an Elysian field. The comedy's chief impression is faintly melancholy, that man is a hostile, disdainful stranger to himself at any age except his present age.

Heavy on talk. Photo Finish needed to approximate the Shavian paradox or the Wildean epigram. But Ustinov's dialogue tends to be smart rather than sharp, cracks wise when it should be wise. Photo Finish is not about to take win or place in the dramatic sweepstakes, but it is a safe, friendly show bet.

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