Laughing Gas

By T.E.K.

HOROWITZ AND MRS. WASHINGTON by Henry Denker

If Sam Levene had graced the British stage for 53 years, he would long since have been knighted. He is a pluperfect master of the groan, the pause, the gravelly riposte, and nobody, but nobody, has his comic timing.

In this comedy, Levene is Samuel Horowitz, an aged widower who has been mugged by blacks, suffered a stroke and is blisteringly irate to find himself in the hands of a black therapist. Formidably equipped for any racial skirmish, Mrs. Washington (Esther Rolle) is the kind of woman who could make the Rock of Gibraltar crumble. While the antiblack, anti-Jewish jokes may offend those of liberal pieties, the laughter on opening night roared through Broadway's John Golden Theater at hurricane force. The odd couple radiates sweetness and light at the end of the evening.

Horowitz is nothing if not democratic in his prejudices. He loathes the New York Times and, at one point, spots a story about James Earl Carter Jr. in the paper: "Some President! Whatever General Sherman did on his march through Georgia, we are now even."

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