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Caustic yet feeling, and most assuredly, funny

In case you were wondering, it is possible for a person to be tasteless, sensitive and funny, all at the same time. The proof lies in Robert Dubac, star and author of "The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?"

The show, which ran for months and months in Denver, Chicago and Boston, opened this week in the quaintly ornate (and largely underutilized) Little Theatre at Cleveland Music Hall. It runs through Nov. 9.

Dubac, a wiry member of the male species who looks as if he could hold his own in a bar fight, even manages to turn his ears into a routine that runs throughout his 90-minute, one-man consideration of this question:
What do women want?
Please, don't get the impression that Dubac actually tells us. He doesn't have the answers. But he does have jokes. And most if not all are aimed to make both men and women in the audience cringe, either in recognition or embarrassment, at least once they've stopped laughing.

The evening is not completely consumed with stand-up. Dubac actually acts, recounting a loosely constructed story of sorts about Bobby. Based somewhat on Dubac, this smart-alecky but likeable Everyman is being stood up by the woman he wants to marry. As he tells us about it in the hopes we will commiserate, he conjures up the five guys from whom he learned how to be such an idiot, when it comes to women.

Several of these characters have their roots in iconographic males we know from show business. The colonel, for instance, takes much from Robert Duvall's performance in "Apocalypse Now." Fast Eddie was all Jack Nicholson libido. Ronie Cabrezzi sounds like one of a number of bone-headed characters created by Eric Bogosian.

Despite their sometimes borrowed inspirations these characters are generally funny diversions particularly Cabrezzi's high-octane rant about his foul-mouthed girlfriend.

As relentless as the jokes and pop self-psychoanalyzing are, and as instructively funny as the acting mostly is, the greatest of Dubac's talents on display here lie in two other areas.

The first is a capacity for beautifully and sardonically attacking morons in the audience. Near the top of the show, he hounded two late-comers who were not only late but delayed the show further because they insisted on finding their seats instead of considerately taking the first available. Then he was all over some poor slob whose beeper went off despite warnings to turn electronic devices off.

Dubac's second special talent involves a running gag about his ears, a pair of cigarettes and the song "Dueling Banjos." That's all I'm going to say. If you want to know more, you'll have to pay the ticket price.

- Tony Brown

THE PLAIN DEALER | October, 2000 | Review Index