Word: rockingly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...THERE ARE OTHER things in life beside sex and booze," wails Belle Bottom midway through the first act of Bottoms Up. "Yeah, but try to name one fast," her father Rock Bottom retorts. The level of punning never gets much higher than clinkers like the protagonists' names, so you had better find a little delight in Rock's old-fashioned cynicism. And if you'll buy, even for one night, the fragile premise that liquor and screwing are the soul of a good time, the 121st Hasty Pudding Show just may seem a delight rather than a fleece...
...show does better than the gags. There's a hint of elegant symmetry to the plot which brings Hatchet Ma Marion and her splendidly repressed son to Bootleg, U.S.A., a last outpost of boisterous prohibition violation. After Rock, the pink-spatzed hoodlum who runs the town, has dropped 45 jokes about his daughter Belle's drunkenness, the 46th ought to be an embarassment, but such is the momentum that...
...ENIGMATIC author isn't hiding himself in the wings--he is out there playing the lead, Rock, stage-managing each big number. And Patterson's performance seemed very much like the show he wrote. At times, you don't see Patterson, Rock Bottom, or anything like a person in the character--only a hyperactive catalogue of disembodied musical comedy gestures. It's a trick best watched in an alcoholic haze, perhaps, but a trick that succeeds...
...almost obscenely comfortable on a stage, engaging and convincing as he puts across the show's only ballad. Randy Parry (Belle Bottom) develops the indifferent drunken daughter's part well, but is overshadowed by the sensational obscene clowning of Ed Strong and Randy Guffey as the secretarial pool, which Rock lends Bootleg's mayor in anticipation of future favors. Smaller parts are handled with uniform wit and energy, though Bill Kiely rates a plate of cold spaghetti for his tepid attempts at an Italian accent...
...groups that play at the Ark are not established rock groups, which is in line with the club's intent of emphasizing the whole experience--light and colors and sound rather than solely the musical. Occasionally one is able to catch a really fine group that has not yet made its name. One such was a group called Man, who did a remarkable, aggressive gig recently...