Elaine May is a corrosively perceptive satirist with a mean comic punch. Her off-Broadway one-acter Adaptation, the first of a double bill completed by Terrence McNally's Next, makes one laugh till it hurts, partly because the ache of recognition is in every line and situation. She has the wit to see that if Pavlov's dogs salivated at the tinkle of bells signifying food, modern man is not so very different. He salivates at psychological flash cards marked Emotional Maturity, Identity Crisis, Making a Commitment, as well as at traditional cues for action such...
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