Merger mania is not confined to “new media.” Geriatric media are also partial to it, though, in the case of the legitimate stage, it’s less a sign of expansion and synergy than of remorseless shrinkage. Thirty years ago, the average New York theatergoer in search of a night out would have been able to choose between a Neil Simon, a Harold Pinter, a boulevard comedy, a gay comedy, a Broadway play, an off-Broadway play … Today, they’re all still available, but only in the same show: The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, by Charles Busch, at the Manhattan Theatre Club. A Broadway matinée-lady-pleaser, by a fringe campmeister, at an establishment subscription house.
Busch is best known (if that’s the phrase) as the author and transvestite star of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset, and other artfully titled and maliciously observed cinematic parodies. In this instance, he appears to be donning the somewhat less gaudy garb of Wendy Wasserstein and making a leap for the mainstream. (As New York Times and New Yorker readers well know, Ms. Wasserstein has been absent from her keyboard of late, she and her vial of seed from some obliging friend having recently had a happy event, covered by the Times in tones of cooing wonder less developed cultures reserve for royal births.)
Fortunately, the leap from Vampire Lesbians of Sodom to the mainstream turns out to be the merest step. In The
