Tuned In

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Tuned In BREAKFAST WITH LES AND BESS by Lee Kalcheim

Typical morning at the Dischingers'. A strange young man wanders about in his shorts; he's the Navy ensign whom Daughter Shelby has married after two days' acquaintance. The phone rings; it is Son David explaining that he just drove the family car into the Central Park lake. In the living room their parents are doing their radio show live; they must pretend that domestic crises are stopped at the door, like tieless men trying to get into "21." After all, Princess Grace is going to call any minute now from Monaco for an "eggsglusive" interview.

The time is 1961, when there actually were airwave couples like Les and Bess observing the absurd convention that breakfast was a time for smiley voices instead of burned toast and reviewing comedies like this. Nowadays, when the shows that used to be off-Broadway are on the main stem, and Broadway shows are running in the little houses, things like this open less glitzily. But the formula is as ever: one set, six characters, some brisk banter and a simple conflict in values bobbing along the sparkly surface.

In this case, Les (Keith Charles) wants to retrieve his old happiness as a baseball broadcaster, while Bess (Holland Taylor) wants to keep climbing the celebrity ladder. Conceits of this sort always depend for their success on sending the audience out whistling their moral codes, but Lee Kalcheim is an amiable writer with a gift for constructing tight comic spots for Taylor and Charles to battle in and out of. The actress makes a tough lady sympathetic; the actor is a canny counterpuncher. Together they reinvent that splendid theatrical institution, the unhappy marriage, that no playwright looking for laughs should ever put asunder.

--By Richard Schickel

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