Hercules in New York

The demi-epiphany is by dint of boredom and against his father’s wishes. His mother curbs his powers, his wrestling career ends with a lost weightlifting showdown. The mob is angry, Venus and Mercury send Atlas and Samson to help.

Zeus relents, the victorious demigod returns to Mount Olympus (Zeus himself descends for a visit, waving to a Pan American jet).

An immeasurably droll and affable comedy played to the hilt by Stang and Strong, though later reviewers seem especially to have overlooked its virtues.

Sex & Mrs. X

This has a good deal of John Osborne’s play The End of Me Old Cigar bearing down upon it, and with a toreador’s flash and dazzle the turn is made. In fact, the whole thing is recast, reshaped and re-formed along the lines of an innocent abroad, so there’s a fine interchange of associations and ideas to be toyed with along the way.

The interest, apart from this, is in this nice picture from Juliet of the Spirits of a nice housewife, a little prudish perhaps, in a dour marriage with sour musical accompaniment, etc.

Bisset knows all the ropes, then has one yanked all at once, while Hamilton exacerbates plainness with paint and gradually finds a steady line.

In the last scene, her editor shows off the prescient civilian dress of 2001: A Space Odyssey more or less, consciously.

Puerto Vallarta Squeeze

The great author “bounded in a nutshell” is a scraggling National Book Award winner to whom the vision is revealed, it buys him and his Mexican girlfriend for a ride north to the border after a hit, it used to work for the Government.

A joke almost too good to be told, and apparently kept secret after one or two festival showings and no critical response.