From The New Group comes a welcome revival of Trevor Griffiths' 1975 comedy-drama that uses acid to burn its way toward a surprisingly humanistic center. Eddie Waters (Jim Dale, playing kindly but with an edge) is a once- famous music-hall comic teaching a class of up-and-comers eager to get on the paying circuit. Those include an old- fashioned Irish jokester (played with a twinkle by James Beecher), a zany Scot (David Lansbury), a self-hating Jew (Allan Corduner), a brother act (Max Baker and Jamie Harris), and the wild-card: Price, a young, viciously sarcastic performer (the electrifying Raul Esparza) who, nevertheless, turns out to hold closest to the ideals of the teacher, who's grown sick of the complacency and easy racist jokes churned out by "successful" laugh-getters in the clubs. Twenty-five years of raging performance artists may have made Price's act appear less shocking now, but Griffiths' point about comedy needing to find a balance between smashing the status quo and working gently to understand human foibles, remains pointed, and his play remains captivating.
