Lemonade and the Autograph Hound

THE STORIES: LEMONADE. As outlined in Show Business: LEMONADE features Jan Miner and Nancy Coleman as a pair of Peoria matrons who seek respite from the doldrums of middle age by selling spiked lemonade to highway travelers. The dialogue is hilarious as the two trade drinks and the fantasies they have concocted to brighten their dull lives. But the two strong performances really emerge when we find there is no sale. Miss Miner's Mabel has not raised a crippled son; Miss Coleman's Edith has not seen her children burn to death. Their lemonade grows tepid; their fantasies lose lustre. Prideaux's theme is the desperation with which we seek to evade the mundane, the illusions small people live by, and the emptiness which can exist beneath the veneer of supposed well-being. (2 women.) THE AUTOGRAPHED HOUND. As the Associated Press describes: THE AUTOGRAPH HOUND is...so funny and unphony that an old hand playwright could be proud of it. The play, at the Off-Broadway Jan Hus Theatre, is funny in a comfortable way. It bases its humor on human and domestic foibles. The playwright's views seem to be that some faults are completely ridiculous and in no way admitting of praise and yet, reassuringly, they spring from an unquenchable human spirit to be celebrated rather than censured. The wife in the three-character play is a full-blown eccentric who stands for hours outside every possible celebrity gathering place to get autographs. One night when she's out, standing in the snow, her husband tears up the treasured collection housed in three living room filing cabinets, bests her in a strangling contest when she gets home, sends their daughter out to find her own apartment, and declares a turning point. But what way will they turn? She's the one, after all, with the 'thrill of the chase' as she expresses it. They find their togetherness-he joins her hobby. (1 man, 2 women.)Prideaux, James is the author of 'Lemonade and the Autograph Hound ', published 1969 under ISBN 9780822200819 and ISBN 0822200813.