Ho-hum Evening at the Palace

Love, Sex, and the IRS was a valiant try, but it didn't quite make it.

Miscasting was part of the problem, probably a continuing one for a small-town civic theater with a limited pool of actors. Thus "Leslie" looked too young and, well, spindly to be making out with the well-developed Kate or the valkyric Connie, and the humor that was supposed to result from a more mature man dressed in women's clothing was only luke-warm. "Leslie" wasn't tall enough either, according to one of the lines in the script.

Also, "Mrs. Trachtman," a Palace regular, needed better direction in order to establish her character as unique, different from other roles in past shows. And her make-up was almost frightening: the red lines hollowing her cheeks on top of the clown white pancake made her look three days dead.

My pet peeve was the use of those stupid-looking mini-mikes that you're not supposed to notice but that stick out like sore thumbs. The Palace is a small theater with good acoustics. Why the microphones?

I also didn't like the tall guy sitting in front of me and obscuring my view, but there's nothing anyone can do about that.