‘THREE POSTCARDS’ GIVEN A READING IN NEW YORK

“Three Postcards”--Craig Lucas’ and Craig Carnelia’s musical play about three women friends sharing and keeping secrets over dinner in a fancy restaurant--delighted almost everybody at South Coast Repertory in January.

Thursday night it opened in New York, at Playwrights’ Horizons, to lukewarm reviews. One critic was charmed; one was put off; the third couldn’t be absolutely sure.

Howard Kissell of the Daily News found the show “a funny and touching evening. . . . The most innovative thing about (the show) is how understated it is. . . . (It is) experimental in a very quiet way.

“From the opening number to the rich, closing ensemble, the music is full of delicacy and warmth. . . . Carnelia gives his music finesse. . . .”

The New York Times’ Mel Gussow wasn’t impressed. He thought that Lucas had handled his theme--”the loneliness of people in close proximity”--less tellingly than in his first play, “Blue Window.”

The company and director, Norman Rene, are the same as at South Coast, and Gussow acknowledged that they were, at times, “sublimely funny”--particularly Brad O’Hare as the snobby waiter.

But in general Gussow found the women’s conversation banal, the time scheme confusing, and Carnelia’s score no better than “amiable”--in a sub-Sondheim kind of way.

Clive Barnes of the New York Post was on the fence. On the one hand, he found the show “pretentious, irritatingly difficult to follow and annoying cute.” And yet--

“I found myself succumbing to it because of its simple all-embracing intimacy. Its extraordinary virtues creep up on your boredom, unannounced, unexpected. It is like an unpromising stranger who suddenly starts to talk disquieting sense.”

IN QUOTES. Lighting Designer Tharon Musser, in Theatre Crafts Magazine, on the exasperation of dealing with 12 co-producers at once: “Soon I’ll have to start charging two fees--one for lighting a show and one for meetings.”