Theater Black, White and Blue-Collar

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Cartoonists from Jules Feiffer to Garry Trudeau have doubled as playwrights, for understandable reasons: both crafts use dialogue and visual narrative, and in both the best humor is rooted in personality. Lynda Barry, whose weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek appears in 55 newspapers, shows that her truest metier may be the stage in THE GOOD TIMES ARE KILLING ME, a sometimes campy yet mostly poignant off-Broadway memoir of blue-collar life in the '60s. The plot crams in far too much -- infidelity and divorce, the random death of a child, teen sex, Volare, bygone rock dances, a misbegotten camping trip -- and the two dozen-plus characters are mostly stereotypes and sketches. But the core story is believably specific and disconcertingly universal: the emergence of a friendship between two preteen girls, one black and one white, amid all the social influences that tend to divide them. Angela Goethals, 14, is affectingly sincere as the white narrator. As her friend, Chandra Wilson, who turns 22 this week, has wit and fire and the promise of major stardom. W.A.H. III