Thin Salami

Ready When You Are, C.B.!, by

Susan Slade, is a stopped clock of a comedy. Every once in a while Julie Harris or the playwright shakes the thing and it ticks off a few farcical laughs, but for most of the evening C.B.'s immobile face tells no comic time at all.

Julie Harris plays a would-be actress who is too unnerved by auditions to try for any parts. Since her rent-controlled Manhattan apartment costs so little, she sublets it and lives off her tiny capitalistic mite. Her latest boarder (Lou Antonio) is a big Hollywood stag hiding out from his studio. He has been afflicted with a bad case of that integrity rash that Hollywood celestials periodically get from banking lots of money.

Lou is an outgoing wench-charmer. Julie is miserly of person and property. She locks up salami in a wall safe, sets rattraps to maim any hand that gropes under the sofa for the hidden vodka, and religiously snaps off lights. Lou breaks into the salami safe and religiously snaps on lights. After this epic depiction of character, Playwright Slade can do nothing but tuck the twosome in bed.

Julie Harris has always had a child's gift for being mischievously amusing and touchingly wistful at the same time, and she displays it again here. Since he is smarmy, rubber-legged, and given to fixed, fatuous grins, Lou Antonio is a more difficult taste to acquire. With comedies like Barefoot in the Park, Any Wednesday, The Knack, Luv and The Owl and the Pussycat in competition, a play like C. B. is not an also-ran but a never-walked.

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