Cast List
NY TIMES REVIEW EXCERPTS:The (Seething) Man Who Would Be Cher By CHARLES ISHERWOOD For indisputable evidence that comedy is fueled by anger, as the adage has it, take a gander at Mario Cantone's face as he approaches a payoff line in "Laugh Whore," the handsomely gussied-up stand-up comedy show that opened at Broadway's Cort Theater last night. The dancing eyebrows flatline. The jaw settles into a strained grimace. The soft brown eyes are transformed into bottomless pools of hostility. Suddenly that amiably yapping puppy has become a snarling Doberman. Yikes! Oddly, Mr. Cantone is most appealing when he's seething. When he pulls aside the mask of an aggressively likable persona to reveal the volcano of outrage underneath we most prize him. This is probably because most of us have to keep our masks on. If a cabdriver ignores our advice, we cannot channel the spirit of Faye Dunaway-as-Joan Crawford, as Mr. Cantone does, and emit a strangled cry from the back seat: "Why ... must ... you ... defy me?!" It would probably be useless, and it would definitely be humiliating. But it is a cathartic pleasure to watch Mr. Cantone enact this small drama of urban vengeance. But if "Laugh Whore" does not prove to be the shapeliest of the many solo shows heading to a Broadway theater near you this fall, it is certainly a fine first salvo. Mr. Cantone concludes with a bawdy nod to one of his fellow travelers in the solo spotlight, Eve Ensler (her "Good Body" opens in a few weeks). Taking suggestions from the audience, he gives a dozen divas, from Julia Child to Joan Rivers, the chance they never had to perform in Ms. Ensler's long-running celebration of female sexuality, "The Vagina Monologues." Virtually all of what he said cannot be printed, or indeed even described, here. But it was a giddy delight. ---------------------------------------------------- TONY AWARD HAVEN OPINION: Mario Cantone is a guy who you either love or hate. Assuming that this show is not a complete disaster at the Box Office, I don't see it being unreasonable predicting a nod for him in the heavily competed category this year of Special Theatrical Event.
Return to the 2004 Index
Home Page
