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TIME: Almanac 1990s
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<text id=93TT1781>
<title>
May 24, 1993: Reviews:Theater
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
May 24, 1993 Kids, Sex & Values
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
REVIEWS
THEATER, Page 85
Restoring The Norm
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By WILLIAM A. HENRY III
</p>
<qt>
<l>TITLE: Wild Men!</l>
<l>AUTHORS: Music and Lyrics By Mark Nutter; Book By Peter Burns,</l>
<l>Mark Nutter, Rob Riley and Tom Wolfe</l>
<l>WHERE: Off-Broadway</l>
</qt>
<p> THE BOTTOM LINE: The men's movement might howl at the moonshine,
but George Wendt fans get to chortle once more.
</p>
<p> Yes, the pseudo-war chant songs make rap sound melodic. Yes,
the plot is thin and predictable and the execution as slick
as a frat-party drag show. All that has little to do with why
a featherweight send-up of the men's back-to-primal-nature movement
ran a year in Chicago and has chugalugged onto off-Broadway.
The show offers fans of the departing sitcom Cheers, wondering
how to cope without their favorite palookas, a two-hour maintenance
dose of Norm, the fat, idle, beer-guzzling oaf with the inexplicably
likable stumblebum smirk.
</p>
<p> George Wendt describes his stage role--as an alcoholic commodities
trader who has gambled away his marriage, career and net worth--as "Norm's evil twin." There isn't even that much difference
between Wendt's characters. The guys gathered to roast in the
tribal sweat lodge and discover the "wild men" within are losers,
not predators, full of thwarted yearning and silly sweetness.
One moment rises to real wit: a dream sequence in which a neglected
son of a rich man summons his father, only to find the old man
is as usual too busy and has sent a surrogate.
</p>
<p> Two harrowing anecdotes are told with apparent amusement that
makes them all the scarier. The group leader recalls falling
into the men's movement as a scam after a sexual-harassment
case ended his college teaching career. Wendt depicts, with
Normesque what-the-hey gestures and overstuffed teddy-bear charm,
how he plunged far beyond his means to display machismo to fellow
traders in the pit. These men clearly ought to be in search
of something. But they can't see the forest or the trees.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>