OCR Text |
Show Some laudable acting 'Don't Drink the Water7 drowns in shallow plot BY ED DITTERLINE Staff Writer Whoever said "Don't Drink the Water" could not have seen the "Water" which opened February 19 at Pioneer Memorial Theatre, (PMT), otherwise they would have never made the statement in the first place, because there was nothing in the "Water." Woody Allen's gag medley which didn't fare too well on Broadway didn't fare too well at PMT either. The pseudo-eastern-European- Communistic-spy-caper drowned in its own laconism through no fault of the actors or the director. The miniscule plot, surrounded by one watered down (excuse the pun) joke after another anoth-er could hardly be expected to keep an audience's complete attention at-tention for two hours. Laudable Acting The production was not com- pletely nugatory, however, thanks to the efforts of certain members of the cast. Although at times the performances seemed amateurish, there was some laudable acting by Helen Sandack and Marvin Smith as the very Jewish Marion and Walter Hollander from Newark, New Jersey. Robert Antrim made the best of his very small part as the Ambassador (which was blown into preposterous proportions propor-tions for Jackie Gleason in the movie version). Dan Handley as Axel Magee seemed to have a difficult time discerning the difference between simpering and blundering. Perhaps he could have played the character char-acter with more strength and determination to offset the premise prem-ise that we had immediately that he would fail at whatever he tried his hand. Handley did, at times, manage to exude a frantic nature which was quite amusing. Typical Nubile Ingenue Barbara Boyce seemed to manage man-age well as the typical Broadway nubile ingenue. It was also good to see Rowena Miller back on the PMT stage. Even in her small part, she was charming. Comic Woody Allen's "Don't Drink the Water" Is playing at Pioneer Memorial Theater. The cast is all Salt Lake talent Including Gene Pack. While it seems that Mr. Wilson, the director, resorted to a grea't deal of torn-foolery and gimmicry, he obviously had a ball directing the show. And if the cast had as much fun as Mr. Wilson did, then maybe that's all that counts. I just wish Woody Allen could have combined his skeletal joke patterns pat-terns with a little portion of theatrical theat-rical "meat" so that the audience would enjoy the "Water" a little more. |