A Party for Friends

Cabaret humor is apt to be as brittle as a glass swizzle stick. Moved to the big, turbulent Broadway stage, it usually breaks. But two expert swizzlers have managed the transfer: Betty Comden and Adolph Green. They started in the '30s, in Manhattan's satirical cellar nightclubs, but eventually the two brightest kids underground emerged above ground as two of the sharpest adults writing musicomedy (book and lyrics for Two on the Aisle, On the Town, Billion Dollar Baby). This season Comden and Green are more visible than ever, with two flourishing Broadway shows--Say, Darling, Bells Are Ringing--plus their movie version of Auntie Mame. And last week, for the first time in years, the old partners triumphantly reappeared as performers in the funniest act now on Broadway.

A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, a nostalgic anthology of their own works, is anything but elaborate: three stools for props, a couple of quick dress changes for Betty, one shirt switch for Adolph. What makes the show remarkable is that chic, cleancut Betty, 39, and fast, Fernandel-faced Adolph, 43, are not one wit changed from their cellar years.

Husking the Corn. Their first act includes Green's hilarious version of the early groping talkies: a pompous baritone named "Donald Ronald" who happily mouths "Honeybunch, you drive me frantic with your smiles," but utters only a half-Nelson eddy of sound. After more silent facial farces, Green joins Betty in loudly husking cornier Shubert operettas (The Baroness Bazooka). There is also a Reader's Digest book condensation that scrunches Gone with the Wind into 22 words:

Scarlet O'Hara's a spoiled pet, She wants everything that she can get The one thing she can't get is Rhett The End.

Perhaps the best of Comden-Green is their quicksilver asides. In a take-off on 42nd Street flesh cinemas ("Doors open promptly at 3 a.m."), Doorkeeper Betty barks: "You've heard of Madame Pompadour, you've heard of Madame DuBarry. Now dig Madame Curie, the greatest madame of them all!" From their turkey Bonanza Bound, they resurrect Inspiration, which credits women with inspiring great men through the ages. "That's enough of that Oriental stuff," cries Betty as Composer Rimsky-Korsakov's wife. "Just look around you in your own backyard." Suddenly she sees a backyard bee, screams, and Adolph frantically pursues the pest while buzz-buzzing The Flight of the Bumblebee.

The Perfect Partners. Brooklyn-born Betty and Bronx-born Adolph complement each other perfectly. As a performer Betty is ironic but cool and soothing--a superior psychiatric nurse. Adolph, with his rubber-kneed strut, his wild hair and mad eyes, is clearly her patient.

Their secret seems to be that no strain --from highly organized Betty's husband and two children to highly disorganized Adolph's feckless bachelorhood--has flawed a 20-year collaboration. "If I weren't stuck with her as my partner," Adolph once wrote in tribute to Betty, "I could be off on my own and free to starve to death--or worse yet, free to bore myself to death."

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