Meeting of the minds

Picasso at the Lapin Agile provides laughs -- both cheap and otherwise

Comments (0) By Jimmy Fowler Thursday, Jul 15 1999

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Bryan Miller

Jeff Bush, Jeanette Chivis, and Shane Beeson work their little gray cells in a turn-of-the-century dive for 11th Street's North Texas premiere.

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Through July 24

(214) 522-PLAY

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You can't help but roll your eyes when Elvis Presley (Tom Eppler) makes a time-traveling appearance at the close of Picasso at the Lapin Agile, but it does complete the triptych -- "all things come in threes" -- that Martin has set up for himself. (I'm just not entirely comfortable with the notion of Presley as a musical genius.) You wish that Martin could shake a little of his comic desperation, his nervous-clown urge to keep the laughs coming whether they're organic to the piece or not, but this script and 11th Street's production are engaging enough to let us ignore the excesses. The best compliment I can pay this show is to say that one of the theater artist indulgences I've consistently ragged on in this space -- no intermission, which usually means the assumption that your production is so riveting that audiences dare not be given a break to stretch their legs -- worked here. Eleventh Street skipped the intermission for Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and I didn't notice it through the 90-minute run. For a critic with a bladder the size of a dime to overlook that decision is telling.