Word: lazebnik
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...SECOND ACT is a version of "Paradise Rejected" and gives LaZebnik a chance to play around with Milton and Shakespeare jokes. Some are good: "To be or not to be," someone begins. "Well, there's nothing to be gained by pursuing that line of thought." The appearance onstage of Satan, Adam, Eve, and God (as well as a deadpin walk-on by St. Peter Borowitz that steals the show for a few moments is a source or clever lines for LaZebnik, usually Satan sings...
...remarks, "I fell guilty, I can't help it I am what I am." she shrugs. A female Jehovah in love with Satan is a reversal with more satiric point than many of the Romantics were able to suggest--one of LaZebnik's most inspired ideas. But except for few brief stretches--as when a Keystone Cop enters and rat-tat-tats the finest...
LaZabnik's earlier work, The Teeth of Mons Herbert, was much weirder than this. The jokes were more obscure, but you got the sense he had a truly original sense of humor. Maybe Mad About Mintz is something of a commercialization of his talents, an attempt to bring the LaZebnik wit to a wider audience than the Lowell JCR. His parodies of Hamlet and Paradise Lost count on only as much knowledge of these works as the casual reader of Bartlett's could be expected to have. The move to Agassiz has made LaZebnik's theater less intimate, more like...
...cast, on the whole, is fine, Dick Bloom, Jim O'Connell and Ken LaZebnik make an energetic, professional and effective male chorus; David Goldbloom is Satan carries much of the show along by his shoer bravaoo, Douglas Hughes plays the closest the show has to a straight man, with consistent, aplomt and a fine voice. "The Nords" (Nancy Abrams Amy Berman and Patty Low) are very funny when deadpanning the lines of a fake Greek chorus...
...less good when they sing--LaZebnik's lyrics require precise enunciation and too often jokes are missed simply because the words are smudged not only in their songs but throughout. Janice Cuddy (God) and Debbie Smigel (Jenny Novocane) are both excellent; Cuddy's "Power to Persuade" is belted out with high skill. Nancy Raffman brings a sharper edge to her role than most others in the cast and her kind of mania is just what an actor of actress needs to bring so this show...