Word: mostellers
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...adept burlesque performances of several cast members make the show. Though not the evening's best, Kenneth Kanter's Pseudolus is engagingly energetic. With girth rivalling that of the man who made the part famous, he successfully imitates some of Zero Mostel's protean expressions and lascivious gestures. He does not do as well vocally. As the starry-eyed lovers, John Lundeen and Lisa Landis--he callow, she nubile--are, appropriately, vacuously charming. But the real delight comes from the supporting cast. In the role of chief slave, Hysterium, at the beleagured household, Thomas Hann clowns in an epicene manner...
Someone gave him a derby, and he mugged with it, a finger held under his nose doing service for the famed mustache. Congresswoman Bella Abzug leaned over his table, clutching her floppy pink hat. "The audience, the audience!" he exclaimed to her. "Everybody was in the audience!" Actor Zero Mostel loomed up and kissed him from the depths of an enormous beard, Actress Claire Bloom, one of his leading ladies (Limelight, 1952), appeared at the table. Roulette Goddard-another protegee (Modern Times, 1936) and his third ex-wife-was somehow brought unscathed through the crowd to chat with...
...situations that have kept audiences laughing for 23 centu ries. This is not news on New York's Via Magna Alba. Ten years ago, Burt Shevelove's and Larry Gelbart's free adaptation of Plautus' plays convulsed playgoers for 964 performances. At that time Zero Mostel pranced onstage like an elephant with a hotfoot in the star ring role of Pseudolus, a slave with a passion for freedom as avid as that of all 1 3 original colonies. He was gloriously funny, and in this revival of A Funny Thing Happened...
...actors do little to enliven the improbable but predictable proceedings. Peter Yates keeps the general energy level so low that not even the masterly Zero Mostel, as a shyster lawyer, can lend any perceptible zest...
...tunes (which rate pretty high by Broadway standards) are more or less intact. The talent is not. The dances-including an endless wedding celebration-are seemingly performed by one of those middle-European troupes Ed Sullivan used for cultural filler. Most sorely missed is the magisterial Zero Mostel in the role of Tevye, which he created on the stage. He has been replaced for unfathomable reasons by the Israeli star Topol, who labors under the handicap of having to project great amounts of charm and personality when he has none to spare. The credits for Fiddler list Norman Jewison...