The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 16

finite trtaDOQTD B4 Akron Beacon Journal Friday, March 14. 1980' Precision puts bounce into Akron farce Audrey Trowbridge Erwin Trowbridge Clarence Dobbins Delivery Boy Harry Charlie Frank ie Patsy Mabel Moe Gloria Al Hotel Maid Mr. Carver Jockeys Ted Aovama, Karen Eterovich Steve Walkowski Frank Jackman Fred Nelson Bruce Biggins Mike Heroid Bob Behrens Tom Hoover Dana Nemeth Mark Paskdl Susan Sprain Ken Winters Jennifer Papp Wallace Sterling Dennis OXonnel Review Dick Shippy Directed bv Joel Friedman; set by Gregory Bel; assistant set designer. Jack Bal-lance; lighting, James HeHelfinger; costumes, Carla Marie Cornecelli; technical direction, Paul Daum; assistant tech director, Julie Summy; stage manager, Sheila Kelly. Then, too, there's Mabel from the chorus, who's an entry with Patsy (at least, until he gets the idea she's doing some skating with Erwin), and here Dana Ne-meth is doing the dumb, brassy floozy bit, trailing a feather boa which she uses like a snakewhip (and which also seems to be molting).

All right, put these antic creatures together, eyeball to eyeball, nicely time their prancing and pratfalling, neatly pace their roar and bluster and you've got sappy bliss within the frenzy. DIRECTOR Friedman has not attempted to mount any kind of set on the hall stage. He has kept it a playing field. Setting means if the locale is Erwin's Ozone Park home or Pasty's hotel den, there's a lettered curtain which so designates. Thus, when Friedman changes scenes, he sends out someone, dressed like a jockey, to pull aside the appropriate curtain.

Friedman shows his summer squirrel up his pant leg. I mean, Walkowski's Erwin is a quivering wreck. The nerd of Ozone Park, N. Y. NEXT, THERE'S the action at the Hotel Lavillere, where the unholy three, Runyonesque sports to the last stitch on thier $10 suits, more or less are holding Erwin captive.

Understand, with Eriwin touting winners, a phone call to the bookie is like getting on the Horn of Plenty for these three. In particular, there's Patsy the name covers his usual function who is ringleader and vice president in charge of deception, and he is scheming to keep Erwin from bolting, which means he's cozzening the klutz when he's not sprinting for the phone to get his action down. And it means Tom Hoover, as the duplicitous Patsy, is skittering and skidding on the Thomas Hall stage like a drunk on skates, accomplices following in his wake, and it's like Frick and Frack on a tricky patch of ice. just something for him to do on a city bus while riding to and from his grubby task of producing Mother's Day banality. George's hobby is not incidental to three cheap race track plungers who are down to their last two-dollar bet when they stumble upon George.

For this trio, it's like hitting the mother lode. But George is something more than an accidental turf handicap-per. He's a pipsqueak, a milquetoast, a quaking little mouse, bullied and badgered at home by a shrill, whining wife and a thundering clod of a brother-in-law, abused and exploited at the office by his employer. So what we get from Walkowski is Erwin in hysteria, a sad-sack who's in a state of constant agitation like someone with a The elements of farce absurd and improbable plot, sprawling comedy are conspicuously present in Three Men on a Horse, a 45-year-old antic romp from George Abbott and John Cecil Holm which Akron University Theater is staging this week in Thomas Hall. Given a farce, the idea is to make the conspicuous even more so, to heighten a sense of the ridiculous.

And that's pretty much how it's being done in Joel Friedman's university show. In fact, there are many moments when Friedman's production achieves a frenzied sappiness. Now, if you must do Three Men on a Horse, presumably believing there's always a need for epidemic giddiness, then surely a fine frenzy of sappiness is what you seek. So Friedman, directing his first university show, has gone after exactly that and has made the frenzy noticeable with some precision. TIIE FURIES of flat-out buffoonery are observed first with Steve Walkowski, cast as Erwin Trowbridge, the comic worm who turns in this play.

Erwin is that composer of greeting card verse who has an incidental talent for picking winning race horses. At least, it's incidental for Erwin stock background with this business. You know, expedience cuts down production costs, but try to achieve cuteness with the expedient. Of course, it's practical, too, to keep props table, chairs, telephone booth, saloon bar to a minimum. You don't want Frick and Frack skating into things.

The short run of Three Men on a Horse concludes with an 8:15 performance tonight, 1 and 8:15 shows Saturday. Met Opera broadcasts will air in stereo broadcast of Verdi's Don Carlo at 1 p. the Met's six remaining live performances this season will be heard in the improved sound. Upcoming operas are Donizetti's Don Pasquale, Puccini's Man-on Lescaut, Wagner's Parsifal, Mozart's The Abduction From the Seraglio and Britten's Billy Budd. For the first time in its 40-year history, the Texaco Metropolitan Opera Saturday matinee radio broadcasts will be offered in stereo to listeners in Northeast Ohio by National Public Radio affiliate WKSU-FM (89.7) via the Westwar I satellite.

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