Review

The man was married, middle-aged and suffering from the "tempus fugit blues." He was depressed by all the "fresh, bright faces" around him, especially when one of them got a major promotion in the company. "It's a bitter day when some stripling outstrips you," he groaned. "You earn a place in the sun--no bigger than a dime--and it's contested every minute." Indeed, it seemed high time to trim the "Mason-Dixon line" with some low-calorie food, have his molars fixed and make a mild pass at a pretty young waitress. On such a scarred old whetstone, durable (57) Actor Elliott Nugent honed his low-pressure comedy tools last week and turned Studio One's The Unmentionable Blues into one of the more civilized comedies of the season. Looking like an older Steve Allen, Actor Nugent still exuded a trim, boyish charm, whether he was twitting himself, his wife ("You're not aware, not tuned to me; you don't handle me carefully") or his new dentist ("All he says is 'Hello, sit down, RINSE.' This peach-fuzz youth, with every tooth in his cheeky cheek, right off, mind you--RINSE!"). Nugent's bland mixture of pathos, petulance and salt was especially savory when he gave himself a frank appraisal, found his face looking like a "leftover artichoke," his teeth "dropping like loose buttons," his body "convex where it should be concave--or have I got my cons mixed?" He had a high old time with his waitress (Sarah Marshall) in a Greenwich Village spaghetti joint, enjoyed a good cry and a good talk "about everything from her cradle to my grave." Seeing things at last as they are "without the neon nimbus," he of course went home to a forgiving wife and a plain little moral: "Life itself gets a little dusty--even rusty. It used to shine all by itself. Now we have to do a little buffing and polishing."

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