Theater: Maharajah & the Cricket

At the Drop of Another Hat brings Michael Flanders and Donald Swann back to Broadway, for the first time since 1960, in a sprightly Mardi Gras of hilarity. These two Britons are suave, witty, sly, jaunty and civilized; as comics, their mastery of timing would shame a Swiss watch.

Physically, they are an antipodal pair.

Swann is a bespectacled cricket on a piano bench. He and his piano both chirp. Flanders, confined to a wheelchair by polio, looks like a maharajah temporarily deprived of his turban, bearers and ceremonial umbrella. He possesses the slightly disdainful aplomb, though not the waspish irascibility of a...

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