Thursday, May 14, 2020

98. COLD FEET. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975


COLD FEET
 
Frank Vohs, Jeri Archer.
"In Lieu of Reviews"

Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE is pleased to provide instead accounts of previous theatre seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for theatre-hungry readers. If you'd like to know the background on how this previously unpublished series came to be and what its relationship is to my three The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage volumes (covering every New York play, musical, revue, and revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the prefaces to any of the entries beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at the end of the current entry.

COLD FEET [Comedy/Prostitution/Romance/Sex] A: Marvin Pletzke; D: Stuart Goodman; S/L: Kay Coughenour; C: Kathleen Sacchi; P: D. Frederick Baker, Stuart Goodman, Frank M. Celicia, and FM Productions; T: Players Theatre (OB); 4/24/72 (1)

A decidedly unfunny comedy about a young, virginal shoe salesman Stanford Flud (Frank Vohs), who wants to wed the gawky Rosemarie Figg, Jr. (Catherine Bacon). Her father, Winthrop Figg (Joe Kottler) offers to send the lad to a prostitute named Mog (Aurelia De Felice) to give him the necessary experience before marriage. At the same time, Rosemarie’s oversexed mother (Jeri Archer) takes off her clothes and offers to perform the same services for the shoe salesman. Complications arise when Stanford’s own pregnant stepmother (Sally De May) arrives to claim he is the father as a way of disproving his virginity.

Mel Gussow refused to write the word “author” to describe the playwright, preferring to label him the “perpetrator.” What he perpetrated was an evening that was “not only unrelievedly witless, but also tasteless.” “We now have a new gauge against which to measure future rock-bottom evenings in the theatre,” he concluded. Douglass Watt agreed, seeing nothing here that was not “silly” or “boring.”

Previous entries:

Abelard and Heloise
Absurd Person Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats” and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais         
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little       
And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The Au Pair Man

Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L. Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster

The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker
La Carpa de los Raquichis
The Carpenters
The Castro Complex
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Changing Room
Charles Abbott and Son
Charley’s Aunt
Charlie Was Here and Now He’s Gone
Chemin de Fer
The Cherry Orchard
The Chickencoop Chinaman
The Children
Children! Children!
Children in the Rain
Children of the Wind
The Children’s Mass
A Chorus Line
The Chronicle of Henry VI: Part 1, Part II,
The Circle
Clarence Darrow