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- January 2, 1984
-
- THE BEST OF 1983
-
- Bright Beach Memoirs. Neil Simon mixes slapstick and sentiment in his
- autobiographical play about an American family, that secret society
- where the passwords are forgive and remember.
-
- La Cage aux Folles. The one megahit musical in a torpid Broadway
- season, Harvey Fierstein's gay valentine boasts a spectacular turn by
- George Hearn, as a Saint-Tropez drag queen, and surefire Jerry Herman
- songs that might have been composed on a calliope.
-
- Fen and Top Girls. In the first, five women till the harsh swampland
- of Norfolk; in the second, a Thatcheresque career woman chats with her
- peers from throughout history. In both, British Feminist Caryl
- Churchill displays acerbic ironies and dazzling technique.
-
- Galas. Or: The Life and Hard Times of Maria Callas. Leave it to
- off-off-Broadway's Charles Ludlam--playwright, producer, director and,
- in the title role, every inch a diva--to put the art back into
- commedia dell'arte.
-
- Isn't It Romantic. Wendy Wasserstein looks at two sisters under the
- skin--one a Wasp princess, the other a Jewish frogett--in an
- irresistible off-broadway comedy about coming terms with endearment.
-
- My One and Only. A trunkful of Gershwin songs, colorful sets from a
- wise child's kindergarten and a pair of toe-tapping charmers in
- Twiggy and Tommy Tune make for Broadway's airiest enchantment.
-
- 'night, Mother. A young woman announces her intention to commit
- suicide; her mom uses every dithery wile to prevent her. Marsha
- Norman's Pulitzer prizewinner is equally entertaining and harrowing;
- in the only roles, Kathy Bates and Anne Pitoniak shine with love and
- anger.
-
- Painting Churches. The twilight of life, the dawn of senility;
- Chekhov comes to Beacon Hill in Tina Howe's sweet, zestful off-
- Broadway comedy.
-
- Passion. The Jekyll of respectability duels with the Hyde of libido.
- Peter Nichols' unsettling domestic comedy survived a ragged Broadway
- production with many of its virtues (and Actress Roxanne Hart's
- Circean charms) intact.
-
- Quartermaine's Terms. Quartermaine, an aging instructor at an English
- school for foreigners, is one of nature's near misses: a decent
- mediocrity, for whom other people's crises are mere whispers in the
- anteroom of his mind. In Remak Ramsay's off-Broadway performance,
- Simon Gray's British import found the perfect pitch of melancholy.