Theater Black, White and Blue-Collar

Cartoonists from Jules Feiffer to Garry Trudeau have doubled as playwrights, for understandable reasons: both crafts use dialogue and visual narrative, and in both the best humor is rooted in personality. Lynda Barry, whose weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek appears in 55 newspapers, shows that her truest metier may be the stage in THE GOOD TIMES ARE KILLING ME, a sometimes campy yet mostly poignant off-Broadway memoir of blue-collar life in the '60s. The plot crams in far too much -- infidelity and divorce, the random death of a child, teen sex, Volare, bygone rock dances, a misbegotten camping trip...

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