Late in “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife,” continuing at the Shubert Theatre through Jan. 26, there’s a line spoken by Lee, the mysterious seductress causing some trouble for a long-married Manhattan doctor and his fraught, searching wife.
Lee accuses Marjorie and Ira of hiding behind a “bourgeois conservative act.” You could level the same charge at the playwright, and the playwright knows it. The playwright is Charles Busch, best known for “Psycho Beach Party” and other downtown-type cult successes. “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” turned out to be Busch’s mainstream breakthrough as well as his Broadway debut, following an off-Broadway launch at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
Directed by MTC head Lynne Meadow, “Allergist’s Wife” is a middlebrow devil of a play, a little risque, a little bourgeois-conservative. It’s a solidly constructed comedy teetering at the edge of ’70s sex farce, before teetering back the other way again. It is laden with bowel-movement jokes, as well as the sort of baroque comic angst so rife in Busch’s earlier, screwier, drag-laden works, often featuring Busch himself in the female lead.
Someday, surely, Busch will essay the “Allergist’s Wife” role: Marjorie Taub, Upper West Side crisis in the making. Meantime we have Valerie Harper heading the national touring company. Marjorie’s therapist has passed on, leaving Marjorie bereft, and no amount of the usual museum shows and foreign films can fill the void. Despite an understanding husband, Ira (Mike Burstyn), she feels stuck.
Into their lives comes Lee (Jana Robbins), formerly Lillian Greenblatt, an old childhood friend from the Bronx now superciliously WASP-y in affect and rather when it comes to her relationship to something called the Universal Human Rights Coalition.
Who is this woman, and why has she moved into the Taubs’ lovely $900,000 condo, done up in class-A style by scenic designer Santo Loquasto? (While not opulent, it’s one of those sets that makes you think: Is this place available for rent? How much?) Marjorie’s intestinally preoccupied mother, Frieda (Sondra James), has a bad feeling about Lee’s motives, as does the Iraqi doorman, Mohammed (Jonathan Hova).
Harper is having and delivering a pretty good time, in a pretty good script. On Broadway Linda Lavin propelled “Allergist’s Wife” with her own unique brand of keening comic ferocity. Harper, who brings a tubeful of goodwill left over from Rhoda on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Rhoda,” takes it easier.
The approach is good in one way, yet not so good in terms of the pacing. Everyone in the cast is a seasoned stage vet, yet everyone tends to milk the reaction shots, attenuate the mugging interludes … it all feels slowed down and overemphasized for the provinces. And for the goyim.
Busch has toned down certain things in his script post-9/11, including every line referring to terrorists and terrorism, as well as various references to anti-Semitism (though the dig at Jesse Jackson and his infamous “hymie-town” comment remains). The tweaks are probably for the better. As is, it’s a solid, somewhat dated play, in a solid, somewhat sluggish touring production. Not bad. Not terrific.
“The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife”
When: Through Jan. 26.
Where: Shubert Theatre, 22 W. Monroe St.
Phone: 312-902-1400
