Posted 6:05 PM by Gene

Charles Strouse, the exceptionally talented songwriter who will be known to posterity as the unintentional co-author of an extremely annoying [C]RAP "ANTHEM" (I do not blame HIM), is about to open his long-awaited stage adaptation of The Night They Raided Minsky's. You remember that one -- it was a late-sixties sitcom in which an Amish girl becomes a burlesque star or something, the sort of fantasy that led Norman Lear (its author) into raging with beet-red face for decades at the evil of religion (until he found it pays to get it), and it bombed despite the editing -- anyway, we look at this ad, and we see the producers have thus far cast four men and two women. We do not wonder why. Having heard Mogul's Friend bemoan the lack of bankable actresses (or rather female ac-TORS) we venture theater producers feel like Sisyphus trying to find young women who aren't the second coming of Sarah Jessica Horseyface. We further suspect the poor Minsky brothers must be rolling in their graves knowing what BRANSON EAST may be about to do to its theme park customers. Of course the ratio might be four-to-two because of the comedians. Few people went to Minsky's for the comedians.

But then few of BRANSON EAST's tour groups go for the entertainment, there being none.