Kooky Miracle

By T. E. Kalem

KNOCK KNOCK

by JULES FEIFFER

Jules Feiffer may be mad, but it is our good fortune that Knock Knock is happily incarcerated in off-off-Broadway's Circle Repertory Theater. This is a kooky, laugh-saturated miracle play in the absurdist tradition. It is as if someone had merged The Odd Couple and The Sunshine Boys and peppered the mix with Kierkegaard and the Marx Brothers. Nor is that all. The unifying element is Jewish humor--skeptical, self-deprecating, fatalistic and with an underlying sadness that suggests that all the mirth is a self-protective mask hiding imminent lamentation.

Neither of the men who dominate Knock Knock is about to weep, but they are bored to tears with each other. Cohn (Daniel Seltzer) and Abe (Neil Flanagan) have shared bachelor digs for 20 years in a small house from which they never emerge. Cohn, an ex-musician, does the cooking and nurses a residual faculty for believing in myths. Abe, an ex-stockbroker, guards the shrine of adamant rationalism.

Antic Hell. Imagine the two codgers' surprise when Joan of Arc (Nancy Snyder) arrives in blazing armor with sword and pennant at the ready. She tells them that her mission is to recruit two of every species, including them, for a spaceship trip to heaven. After that, all antic hell breaks loose. Instant magic occurs: appearances and disappearances, deaths, resurrections, changes of identity, autokinetic kitchen utensils and finally Joan's celestial levitation. Director Marshall W. Mason moves all the UFOs and the splendid cast at a rocketing pace. The words are manic--puns, syllogisms, answer-and-question games, in that order. Some scenes are animated versions of Feiffer's cartoon strips. Basically one-line throwaways, they lack dramatic continuity, but they sputter with hilarity.

St. Joan's last advice to the odd couple is "Get out of the house." As for Knock Knock, the advice has to be--get into that playhouse.

T.E. Kalem

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