Rue on Rye

Comedies about love, sex and marriage always contain a slight element of the sadistic. What is often pure misery for the participants is pure merriment for the spectator. Watching other people go through hell seems to be fun. At least it is in Lovers and Other Strangers, a sort of diminutive Plaza Suite that consists of four diverting playlets not overly witty or wise but foaming with gentle laughter.

The evening pokes fun at four different steps in the mating dance. Step 1 is seduction. Jerry (Ron Carey) coaxes Brenda (Zohra Lampert) into his apartment. He wants to hit and run; she wants a "meaningful relationship." He plies her with a Coke. She dizzies him with quotes from Erich Fromm. They dance together as if a referee had told them to break clean. He chases her until she catches him. But who was the spider and who was the fly?

In the second playlet, there is precious little mating or dancing. Johnny (Gerald S. O'Loughlin) and Wilma (Renee Taylor) have one of those marriages that resemble the state of chastity. This night, Wilma wants sex. But there is no love for Johnny, an advertising salesman who has just lost the Xerox account. As the pair bicker and belt each other a la Edward Albee's Virginia Woolf, it soon becomes clear that Wilma is twice the man Johnny is. Long ago, she kicked the living libido out of him.

A twitchy dance of premarital jitters enlivens the third playlet. Mike (Marvin Lichterman) bursts into the apartment of his fiancee Susan (Mariclare Costello) at 4 a.m. to tell her that the wedding bells are not going to chime. Fluttering around like a chicken with its head cut off, he sputters out a dozen reasons why the match would be catastrophic: like, for instance, her arms are too thin. When his hysteria runs out of steam, Susan blandly and sweetly asks him if he and his father got fitted for their tuxedos today.

The fourth playlet depicts the mating dance as a marathon. Frank (Richard Castellano) and Bea (Helen Verbit) have been shuffling around together for more than 30 years. They can't imagine anything else, and while they remember an occasional hurt, such as Frank's infidelity, they can scarcely recall a joy. Yet they are appalled that their son Richy (Bobby Alto) is breaking up with his wife Joan (Candy Azzara) after only six years of marriage. The elders try to patch things up. But incompatibility and compatibility are equally obscure. Richy's and Joan's reasons for divorcing are as fathomless as Frank's and Bea's for staying married. It is all part of the mysterious human comedy, enriched by the quietly commanding achievement of Richard Castellano's performance as Frank. Pouch-eyed and beer-bellied, he looks, talks and acts just like Paddy Chayevsky's Marty grown 30 years older, and gives to the entire production a particular comic flavor of rue on rye.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.