(2 of 4)
LUV. Murray Schisgal laughs through his characters' tears in a takeoff of a society and a theater that swim in self-pity. Mike Nichols' direction and the performances of Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson and Alan Arkin make love seem an outrageously humorous subject.
Off Broadway
WAR AND PEACE. The life force of a great novel surges through this APA-at-the-Phoenix rendering of the Tolstoy classic. The tone and thematic intent of the work have been preserved, and Sydney Walker as old Prince Bolkonski and Rosemary Harris as Natasha are supremely good.
TARTUFFE. While Moliere has suffered a slight miscarriage of esthetic justice in this broad and bouncy Lincoln Center presentation of his biting and bitter comedy, the performance of Michael O'Sullivan in the title role is a splendidly surrealistic wedding of malice and humor.
BABES IN THE WOOD. Rick Besoyan's vaudevillian version of A Midsummer Night's Dream is more akin to Minsky than Shakespeare. The humor is broad, the music is gay, the mood is light. The groundlings would have loved it.
THE SLAVE and THE TOILET cater to the white mentality that masochistically enjoys being reviled for injustice to Negroes. With painful intensity LeRoi Jones dramatizes both naked hate and the interracial love that dare not speak its name.
RECORDS
Jazz NOW'S THE TIME! (RCA Victor). After years spent stubbornly exploring the back roads of modern jazz, Tenor Saxophonist Sonny Rollins knows his way unerringly around the territory. He goes off like a firecracker in Miles Davis' Four, takes a postmeridian jaunt in John Lewis' Afternoon in Paris, nods to Charlie Parker in his dry-eyed blues Now's the Time, makes Thelonious Monk's 'Round Midnight sound fathoms deep.
ANYONE FOR MOZART? (Philips). The Swingle Singers, having made J. S. Bach a belated bestseller by scat-singing him (Bach's Greatest Hits), have tried to do the same by Mozart (Sonata No. 15, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik). Unfortunately, young Mozart never was as cool a swinger as the Old Wig, and the babaladelahs sound emptier festooning his classical melodies.
SALT AND PEPPER (Impulse). On the theory that two tenor saxes are better than one, Sonny Stitt and Paul Gonsalves spur each other to new heights in Salt and Pepper, S'posin' and Perdido, though Stitt, a lively and eloquent musical descendant of Lester Young, outplays the darker, deeper-voiced Gonsalves.
NIRVANA (Atlantic). Flutist Herbie Mann and Pianist Bill Evans stage a slowdown, giving a performance that is either extremely cool or simply congealed. There are some pleasant Oriental overtones but scarcely a beat, let alone a pulse, in most of the pieces (Willow Weep for Me, Mann's Nirvana); Cole Porter's I Love You is a cheerful exception.
BLACK PEARLS (Prestige). Tenor Saxophonist John Coltrane is the featured soloist, and he zooms boldly off to do some fine, abstract skywriting at Mach 1. Meanwhile, back at the piano, Red Garland waits to deliver earthbound but agreeable interludes of up-tempo swing.