What I liked
An OK sense of the Algonquin Round Table, although there are only seven seats (and NO references to the long list of other distinguished attendees).
What I didn't like
Poor planning, which leaves the audience waiting while the actors make some SLOW costume changes! (Try letting one actor end the scene with a long speech while the other actor exits to make the change—-with some offstage help!)
Very ragged, non-period haircuts on the male actors!
“Robert Benchley”, and the miscast actor playing him, doing none too well bridging some dead air between scenes.
My overall impression
The first preview clocked in at 100 minutes, not 80, thanks to a late start AND some interminable waits for costume changes which the director should have solved BEFORE the audience arrived! An entertaining anecdote from the 1930s with a supporting cast of famous names and a modest sprinkling of sparkling quips quoted. It all builds, too slowly, to a climactic card game, which goes on and on and on. The show should be shorter, so cut it, judiciously, as well as the hair of all the actors, very noticeably NOT period correct! Surprisingly, the stars turn out to be the only women, two of them—-“Dorothy Parker” and a sympathetic waitress who gets to demonstrate The Black Bottom, a ditzy dance of the period!
