‘Suds’: Some Critics Foam

“Suds” isn’t a spinoff of “Soap,” but a musical about some kids bopping at the laundromat in the early ‘60s. It proved a fun show at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre last summer, at least for former boppers.

Now it’s in New York, at Stage Left, a cabaret theater in a new Times Square entertainment complex called the Criterion Center. Weekly Variety found the show vapid, silly and meaningless, but rather a kick. “It will find an audience, probably with the same people who are able to laugh at their high school yearbooks.”

Michael Kuchwara of the AP was basically unamused. He called “Suds” “a numbing regurgitation of many of the song hits of the pre-Beatles era.” The songs were great--”Dedicated to the One I Love,” et al.--but the book? “Dippy.”

Said Jerry Talmer of the New York Post: “An all-out, straight-out knock ‘em in the aisles cast . . . It is all in good fun and it is quite good fun.”

Mel Gussow of the New York Times called it “a musical for those who can’t get enough of their favorite period”--a group that clearly didn’t include him. He found the show lacking in point of view, wit and brevity.

But “Suds” is making a fight for it. There are lots of laundromat people out there.

Speaking of non-traditional casting--the subject of a scheduled all-day conference Tuesday at the Japan America Theatre--there’s a lot of it going around nationally. Ruby Dee is preparing to play Amanda in an all-black production of “The Glass Menagerie” for the Cleveland Playhouse, and the Denver Theatre Center is about to open an all-female production of “Waiting for Godot,” starring Ann Guilbert and Sandra Ellis Lafferty. Has Samuel Beckett been told?

Michael Kearns’ solo show, “Dream Man,” got a sheaf of fine reviews at the Edinburgh Festival--the Fringe, of course. James Carroll Pickett’s script has Kearns operating a late-night Dial a Fantasy service for gay men. “Kearns is superb as the telephone sex host who makes a living out of his clients’ fears, fantasies, hang-ups and isolation, but who cannot fill his own well of loneliness,” wrote Time Out’s Lyn Gardner.

George Peppard is also touring a one-man, “Papa,” about Ernest Hemingway. But don’t expect him to bring it to Los Angeles.

“We want to play this where people enjoy going to the theater,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Marian Zailian. “Nobody goes to the theater in L.A. these days. That’s the worst goddam theater town in the country.”

He might, he said, play San Diego.

IN QUOTES: George Balanchine in class (quoted in Ballet Review)--”Give! What are you saving it for?”