Page 16 HIGH GEAR-DECEMBER 1980

wone got of

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ENTERTAINMENT

Peter Allen at the Front Row

By Tom McRoberts Peter Allen made his first Cleveland appearance on November 21 to a small but very enthusiastic audience at the Front Row Theatre. Allen has been touted by Belkin Productions as being just one hit record away from superstardom" and judging from his performance. this could happen almost anytime in the very near future.

Peter Allen was discovered by Judy Garland fifteen years ago in his native Australia when he was one half of an act called the Allen Brothers (the other half. Chris Bell, was not really his brother) and has been working in the US. ever since. He is perhaps best known for writing hits for other artists, such as "Don't Cry Out Loud" for Melissa Manchester and "I Honestly Love You" for Olivia Newton-John. He was heard, but not seen, singing his. "Everything Old is New Again" in the recent film ALL THAT JAZZ His Television appearances have included the tomorrow show and Merv Griffin. He will be appear-

ing at Radio City Music Hall in January.

Aller's act consists of his singing his own compositions, playing the piano. regaling the audience with his stories of Australia, Olivia Newton-John and a recent Royal Command Performance and surprise of surprises! an energetic and very graceful high-kicking dance routine to "Everything Old is New Again In preparation for the rockettes" he said

..

His songs include, in addition to the previously mentioned numbers. "I Go To Rio." "I Don't Go Shopping."Quiet Please. There's A Lady on Stage," a tribute to his ex-mother-in-law. Judy Garland (he was married to Liza Minnelli) and "As Time Goes By" during which he asked for help from the audience

While Belkin is calling him. The next Superstar those of us who didn't care who shot JR. and went to the Front row that Friday night know that this bilag anything is an understate-

ment

Peter Allen

"Lone Star" at Cabaret

Good ol' boys bustin' guts

By R. Woodward There is probably no other play being performed in the Cleveland area right now that is getting audiences to laugh harder than Lone Star by James McLure, now running at the Cabaret Dinner Theatre as its 10:30 p.m. second show on Fridays and Saturdays.

Audiences are laughing so hard, in fact, that one wonders if the laughter is not at least partly in self defense.

Set behind Angel's Bar in Maynard, Texas, the play centers around the comments of Roy, a pushy, loud-mouthed, jingoistic, Viet Nam veteran. The only local resident who served in Viet Nam, Roy spent most of the time he was over there dreaming of being back home sitting behind Angel's Bar late at night drinking Lone Star Beer and eating Baby Ruths. For the past two years he has spent every night going through the motions of living his dream.

He is suddenly precipitated into an awareness of impending middle age by discovering that his simple-minded brother Roy was having sex with his wife when he was away and by the unexpected loss of the chief symbol of his youth--his 1959 pink Thunderbird convertible.

The play's three good ol' boy characters are not merely vivid; they are onslaughts.

The play can be seen as a sort of satirical variation on the story of the Elephant Man: Instead of being obliged to recognize the humanity beneath the warped

How Jack Wrangler Came In

Once I was, just a pla Then gay theatres started open all over the count, and 1 became a Gay Playwrigh All my old gay plays (I've been writing them since 1964) are being dragg-

WRITE

ert out and done from Calgary to Capetown But you don't want to hear about that you want to hear about Jack Wrangler

The management of the Glines company in New York begged me to read Jack Wrangler for the

Robert Patrick shoulders Jack Wrangler, to the delight of Dale Merchant, in this scene from T-Shirts. the off-Broadway production.

role of Kink" in my play T-shirts.

was willing! vaguely knew Jack's name and that he'd done a film with my friend Samantha Fox, as well as much gay pron

Before meeting him I checked out one of his gay films I liked the superstar. Charlton Heston quality that made hm more mem orable than the mere grunters and-greasers around him he seem ed the last of the personality stars like John Wayne or Marilyn and he had some humor.

After a terrible time convincing his doorman that a shabby bum like me was indeed invited by Mr Wrangler. I got to Jack's door He opened it himself, in jeans and plaid shirt open to the waist (the shirt. not the jeans). With ever whelming warnith and friendli ness he said "Hi I'm Jack Wrangler."

body, you are obliged to recognize the humanity beneath the warped intellects. Rather than killing any of the pathos, the belly laughs give it a context that is less obvious and less maudlin.

William Jamieson and Doug Morgan, who were such a killing comedy duo in Sexual Perversity In Chicago, are joined by David Reifel to make an equally killing comedy trio.

Playing Roy, Jamieson once again shows that he can make excesses of a character seem not only likely but inevitable. He has a special knack for depictions the deadliness of a person of limited self-awareness who is in deadly' earnest. Few players are able to give such pointed and emphatic delivery to ghastly-funny lines while maintaining so convincingly the illusion of not noticing the audience's hysteria.

Ray, Roy's younger brother, is so conspicuously and incredibly stupid that, it's a considerable amplishment on the part of David Reifel's acting that Ray, comes off as a characterization and not just a low running gag. Reifel, who has played intellectual types in previous Cabaret shows, assumes a non-cerebral manner with no sign of strain. Reifel's own great amusement at his character's gaucheries has been cleverly channelled by him and the director back into the characterization to help get across Ray's foolishly grinning

manner.

Doug Morgan had a temperature of 101 degrees on opening night, but he still managed to be vivid, convincing, and funny playing Cletis, the blithely nerdish character who admires Roy and has been tagging along after him for years and years trying to imitate his behavior and style of

is; Brutus went right back to dress. Morgan's flexible, expressive face gets across with ease humping.) Cletis's unabashed emotionallzing.

Jack turned out to be a rather shy pretty well-read staggeringly wellbuilt actor with a determi nation to be liked that was almost a visible glow around him.

He gave a super reading of the role and discussed some of my other work, which, for an author, is better than sleeping with us. He seemed fine for Kink, the 30year old ex-alcholic pulling his life together in T-Shirts.

There are two other roles, a 40ish fat playwright hysterical from Sexual rejection (for some reason everyone insisted I play that), and Tom, a 20-year old "looking for answers. As a publicity stunt (before we knew we had that living publicity stunt, Jack Wrangler) we had advertised for The Most Beautiful Boy in New York.

Well, we got 'em. Once in your life you should sit watching that year's crop of cuties parade for you. We had expected maybe fifty. We saw five times that many and turned away more.

Well, he certainly was For about the first halfhour he did Jack Wrangler for me walking talking and pouring drinks like the man in the movie's Then his rabbit Brutus hopped in and, et.pt af humping my shin Bru Jack-éried grabbing for the Jack was probably the draw. What will Mi Patrick When they got there and found hunk We looked at each othe..out they and laughed (Jack and me, that.

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Despite being regarded by Roy as being the town cremand being mocked and abused by him, Cletis seems to be less deserving of patronizing pity than Roy. Cletis, at least, does not begrudge himself or others any of whatever limited, fleeting satisfactions might happen to cross their paths.

Morgan gets a lot of choice hilarity out of conveying Cletis's core of placidness and inertia which makes him constitutionally incapable of doing the one thing that Roy wants to see him do--which is self-destruct.

Director Kenneth Preston has managed to have the various details come across in all of their lurid glory without their running away with the presentation, and he has managed to highlight the author's thematic concerns 'so that they are hard to miss but don't seem to be pointed to.

The play gives the impression of being an inside job by another Texan (which would explain why no group of Irate Texans Mast lynched the playwright)-, -?.

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