On Broadway
YOU KNOW I CAN'T HEAR YOU WHEN THE WATER'S RUNNING. Four consistently droll, frequently hilarious, and occasionally touching playlets by Robert Anderson, who plays his variations on a theme of sex—as an element of shock in art, a waning force in middle age, a matter of concern to parents, a misty memory of the aged.
THE HOMECOMING. Awarded the Tony as the season's best play, Harold Pinter's drama melds the mystique of the surreal with relentless honesty in the examination of interpersonal relationships. Flawlessly performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, it forcefully binds the audience in a puzzled spell while catching it up in heated controversy.
BLACK COMEDY is a slam-bang comedy—literally. The humor of Peter Shaffer's one-acter springs more from body English than feats of wit. It is based on a single conceit —agile actors in a blaze of lights behave and misbehave, bump and reel, as if in total darkness.
THE APA REPERTORY COMPANY. The mix in the company's current dramatic bag is set in the English drawing room and the Norwegian household; it is also culled from the Russian epic and the American farce. Rosemary Harris leads the highly competent group in School for Scandal, The Wild Duck, War and Peace and You Can't Take It With You.
CABARET, winner of eight Tony Awards, including one for Best Musical, is all binding and no book. The ambiance of the musical, set in the decadent Berlin of the 1930s, is as sinuous and sexy as original sin, but the show's plot line and score are all predictability and convention.
Off Broadway
HAMP. A sweet but Simple Simon gives in to panic at the front during World War I and is punished by a military machine that cannot afford to temper steeliness with compassion. Robert Salvio gives a most sympathetic interpretation of Private Hamp as he faces court-martial.
AMERICA HURRAH, by Jean-Claude van Itallie, erupts on the theatrical landscape, pouring a lava of satire, comment and invective on some questionable aspects of modern life. Three playlets, Interview, TV and Motel, are inventively directed by Jacques Levy and Joseph Chaikin and interpreted by a flawless cast.
EH?, by Henry Livings, is about Valentine Brose. He lives in a boiler room. He is a nit. His wife lives in there too. She is a nut. He is funny. She is funny. So is the play.
RECORDS
Jazz
ANDREW HILL, COMPULSION (Blue Note). Haitian-born Pianist Hill is magnificently obsessed with the complex rhythms and bold colors of African music. Aided by Nedi Quamar's African thumb piano (a handmade wooden box holding long metal prongs that are plucked), Renaud Simmons' conga and Joe Chamber's drums, he conjures up a thundering, lashing storm with sweeps across the keyboard —and then lets it fade into the silver pinging of random raindrops. Freddie Hubbard's trumpet has a cry for every change of mood.