I attended the Tuesday evening performance (Dec. 18) with my wife. The
house was full and the audience seemed very anxious to be receptive.
They laughed early and often and gave the cast a standing ovation.
    My own feeling was that the first act creaked along with exposition
and some fairly tired jokes. Things pick up considerably when Norbert
Leo Butz crossdresses and presents himself as Millet's widowed sister.
He channels generations of comic actors who have done this turn and
builds on the comic credentials he presented in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
    The second act is far more lively, and the last 20 minutes or so are
truly funny. Nonetheless, it takes a first-rate cast to bring this off.
As I sat in the Lyceum Theater--the program notes Twain saw a play there
99 year ago--I wondered at how humor, especially on stage, evolves or
transmogifies with time. I wondered what Mel Brooks would think of Is He
Dead. I wondered what Clemens might make of Blazing Saddles.
Dan

Daniel R. Bronson
Montclair State University