Wedding Quake

A Family Affair (by John Kander, James and William Goldman) begins where other musicals leave off; that is, its first lines are "Will you marry me?" and "Yes." In the real world a healing numbness sets in after these words are spoken, but Affair's attempt to convey love's anesthesia at first brings out only the authors' thinnest whimsies. The affianced couple (Larry Kert and Rita Gardner) are a chilly pair, and the opening songs seem less clever than the stage furniture, which wheels magically around during scene changes.

Happily, the show settles down to the real business of a wedding, which is squabbling and confusion. The negotiators, who would do credit to a disarmament conference, are Alfie Nathan (Shelley Berman), the bride's uncle and guardian, and Tilly Siegal (Eileen Heckart), the bridegroom's mother. Alfie innocently proposes a family affair in his living room, with only 40 guests present. Tilly wants the Old Oaks Country Club ("Problem weddings our specialty") and 400 guests. Alfie's defeat is honorable, and most of the time it is funny.

The talented Berman is a nightclub comic whose best turns are monologues into an invisible phone, and it is no surprise that the show's best number is one in which Berman writhes about on a phone (visible), plotting revenge on Tilly Siegal. Most of the time Alfie and Tilly manage to obscure Affair's most serious defect, which is that it works so terribly hard to provide a merely adequate evening's entertainment. One innovation is pleasing: the choruses depart from the epicene standard of Broadway musicals; the members, in fact, look a great deal like people.

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