Button, Button

PROMENADE, ALL! by DAVID V. ROBISON

One of the persistent myths about actors is that they are egomaniacs. Not so. They're insecure souls who thirst for the love and reassurance of audiences who applaud with whatever wild abandon the human palm will permit.

It is not terribly surprising that a number of quite gifted actors have banded together to produce plays that will help them attract that adorational enthusiasm. The group is called LARC (for Loose Actors Revolving Company), and it includes George C. Scott, George Grizzard, Anne Bancroft, Blythe Danner, Colleen Dewhurst, Julie Harris, Frank Langella, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Rod Steiger, Pat Hingle, Richard Kiley, Dustin Hoffman and quite a few others. They have, and they feel they ought to have, the determining voice on scripts. This is an error of the first order; actors are to scripts as seals are to fish.

So here they are, in LARC'S debut, three hungry, enormously attractive actors--Hume Cronyn, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson--taking stylish licks at a play that has far more seasoning than substance. It is a generational saga of American life from the late 19th century to the present, a la Our Town, from Grover Cleveland and his mistress to Masters and Johnson. With obvious delight and gusto, the key actors play many men and women at various ages, and they are awfully good at it. The play concerns a clan that manufactures buttons, but Playwright Robison seems to have lost a few of his. -T.E.K.

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