NY Mirror

Comments (0) By Michael Musto Tuesday, Nov 7 2000

So you're going to see Tabletop? Well, the dark comedy isn't really high art—it's too much like an extended WKRP in Cincinnati—but it does expertly dissect the world of TV commercials in all of its absurd capitalistic tyranny. You'll never look at an ad for a creamy fruit swirl in quite the same way.

A yummy parfait with a dark center, Charles Busch's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife is a much better Neil Simon comedy than the one Neil Simon just wrote. Sweetly enough, Busch spent the opening night making sure press people were going to his boyfriend's book party! His next play should be The Tale of the Biographer's Wife.

photo: Sylvia Plachy

"As soon as I walk offstage, I’m back to normal": Lewis Black, not smiling.

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At a dinner for Quills, the flick about my boyfriend, the Marquis de Sade, everyone was bitten by a gin bottle and positively retching from the movie—lots of tongues are cut, probably to put an end to all the scenery chewing—but those who'd also seen Robert Redford's misty, watercolored The Legend of Bagger Vancewere expressing calmer feelings. "It's basically A Golf Ball Runs Through It," deadpanned a guest.

A Kiss member—Ace Frehley—ran through Don Hill's the night the Toilet Boys played there and remarked to clubbies, "When is Peter Criss going to fucking come out already?" He does wear an awful lot of makeup.

Finally, I'm not making this up: That L.A. mansion where a cop recently shot and killed an innocent guy who had a toy gun has an even more bizarre history than any loft in Noho. I've learned that the house—known as "The Castle"—was once the home of pornographers who used it as a not-for-prime-time film set. After that, a trio of cast members from various versions of MTV's The Real World—including the original gay guy, Norman Korpi—took it over for three years. In fact, it's the setting for a flick those and other Real World-ers shot last year called Rewind. Too bad the house is now tainted by another kind of shooting. I'm PISSED OFF!!!

musto@villagevoice.com