Off- Off- Broadway Show is Excellent

Christine Hahn (left) and Susanna Hobrath star in Laughter and Hope and a Sock in the Eye, a great little show that is playing in New York next week.

Make plans to attend a really enjoyable evening for Dorothy Parker fans. For three shows, May 3-5 at 6:30 p.m. at the Producers Club (358 W. 44th Street), Laughter and Hope and a Sock in the Eye is a wonderful production marvelously staged by Christine Hahn and Susanna Hobrath.

I’m no Robert Benchley, but I know what I like and I really like this show. The program is four of Parker’s best stories: Sentiment, The Waltz, Arrangement in Black and White, and Just a Little One. The two actresses are fabulous. Period costumes, intimate setting, and a bar is right inside the place. Tickets are only $10 (50 cents more than The Matrix, what a deal).

The title of the production is of course lifted from the last line from her 1926 couplet Inventory. The actresses perform two monologues each: Susanna Sentiment and Arrangement (a personal favorite); Christine takes over for The Waltz and Little One.

A sparse set is all that is needed. The pair are rising stars in the New York theater and film world. Christine is in the upcoming Kevin Costner Tigers baseball movie For the Love of the Game (another Parker-baseball connection, very cool). She has had parts in The Last Days of Disco, Saturday Night Live, Law & Order and a lot of regional theater such as Amadeus and Fool For Love. Susanna is a beautiful redhead who is doing some soaps, Another World and All My Children. She has also starred in numerous indie films and Off-Off-Broadway shows. I think I saw her in a commercial, and she was in a sketch on Conan O’Brien.

The highlights for me were Christine as a drunk in Little One and Susanna as a drippy southern belle in Arrangement. Bring some friends and see this show, it isn’t often you get to see Parker performed live.

Call the reservation line: 212-874-5300 x1395.