Magnificent Theater and a Cool Party Gag

Theatre Professionals Mr. and Mrs. The Great Plotnik saw two openings this week. One was magnificent theater and one was a glorified party gag.

Wednesday night they saw Lillian Hellman's 'The Little Foxes' at the A.C.T. and it was a knockout. The curtain opens onto a sumptuous sea of red -- the drawing room of Regina Giddens's Alabama mansion circa 1900. For the next two hours and forty minutes, it's a civics lesson (with great dialogue) about greed, social class, Northern disdain for the South and the Hubbard family's disdain for both the aristocratic planter class above them and the poor blacks below. The N word is bantied about quite a bit, for good reason, and Regina Giddens herself -- who was played in the William Wyler 1941 movie by Bette Davis and in the stage remake 40 years later by none other than Elizabeth Taylor -- is like Scarlett O'Hara with brains. She makes you shiver. Three acts pass by in a hearbeat and Plotnik wished there were three more.

Last night Plot and Duck saw Marc Salem's 'Mind Games.' Salem is this little tubby guy in a three piece suit who appears to read minds. He's brilliant -- once he got Plotnik up on stage, with five other people, to make a drawing, and guessed which drawing had been drawn by each person -- not that it was too difficult to guess Plottie's, since he drew a plate of boeuf daube with rosti potatoes and broccoli in a mild Hollandaise.

Oh, it's very interesting, but...ho hum. Salem is basically a one-trick pony, who does remarkable bits of guesswork, but even if he really CAN guess the serial number on the ten dollar bill hidden in an audience member's wallet, which he appeared to do, Plotnik felt removed from the whole process. Salem never lets anyone get close enough to whatever it is he's really doing to make the audience care one way or the other. It's not a bore, but it's definitely better for free.

What Plotnik wanted to know -- how many seats the Republicans are going to lose next week -- Mark Salem didn't tell him. At best, Salem is the hired cat in a very cool turban standing in the corner at a cocktail party pretending to be Karnak.

Now, The Little Foxes: it's the real deal.