STAGE REVIEW : KOPELL GETS OFF THE BOAT, BUT ‘RABBI,’ ‘SPROUTS’ SINK

Bernie Kopell’s bio in the program of the Murray Schisgal twin one-acts that opened Tuesday at the New Mayfair Theatre mentions only casually his connection to television’s “Love Boat.” If that’s an attempt to underplay his prime-time affiliations, Kopell’s making a big mistake.

Better he should repudiate his association with this wretched double bill of insipid theater.

In “The Rabbi and the Toyota Dealer” and “A Need for Brussels Sprouts,” Schisgal pulls off something one would have thought impossible these days: He manages to insult the Japanese, the American Indians and women in general.

This news will come, no doubt, as a complete shock to the playwright who drops these slurs as casually as an old vaudevillian drops his pants: For a yock--and with about the same amount of class. (Murray Schisgal, meet Jay Presson Allen, who managed a similar feat three years ago at the Ahmanson with “A Little Family Business.”)

There is virtually nothing to recommend in “Toyota Dealer,” a confrontation between a Reform rabbi in jogging clothes (Charles Levin) and Morton Prince (Kopell), a philanderer, self-described “bad Jew” and Toyota Dealer of his congregation who has committed adultery 67 times and has now decided he must enter a Jewish monastery (sic) at once. The reason? The woman he chose to dally with on the 68th go-around.

We won’t tell you why her identity is so overwhelmingly compelling (it’s also visible a mile down the road), but we will tell you it’s hardly worth suffering through Morton’s contorted reluctance to divulge it, which takes up nine-tenths of this play.

When he does reveal it, it’s not only anti-climactic, but poses a curious dramaturgical problem. The piece zooms from cheap slapstick to serious drama without passing “Go,” indicating one thing at least: that if Schisgal would stop being so smug (you can cut the smugness with a chain-saw), he just might write something worth sitting through.

As for “Sprouts,” only the keen sensibilities of Kopell and the excellent Frances Lee McCain rescue that leftover stew: Unemployed middle-aged actor meets single policewoman over a summons in his New York apartment.

He’s been playing his record player too loudly and she turns out to be “the old hag” who lives upstairs and doesn’t like it. It’s one trite, tired bit after another, laced with more of those incredibly unfunny jokes we mentioned and capped by a predictable ending. Mercifully, the acting is superior (especially McCain’s) and, thanks chiefly to the actors, the conclusion even manages to be touching.

Director Jerome Guardino, who has numerous solid credits to his name (he once created a musical from Schisgal’s “Jimmy Shine”), has staged as competently as this dead-horse material allows. Why he wanted to is another question. For reasons better known to himself, Lawrence B. Marks produced.

Getting back to Schisgal, who appears to have had no compunctions about seeing this community theater fare mounted on an Equity stage, one must charitably assume that he’s woefully out of touch.

But then awareness and taste cannot be dictated any more than talent. These plays, described as new, smack of having sat a long while on somebody’s shelf.

Not nearly long enough.