Guilty pleasure The frothy Tale of the Allgergist’s Wife BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife By Charles Busch. Directed by Ed Shea. With Peggy Melozzi, Jim Sullivan, Marilyn Murphy Meardon, Watre Perez, and Paula Faber. At 2nd Story Theatre through June 6.

One of the frustrations of 2nd Story Theatre’s program of Short Attention Span Theatre playettes usually was that you wanted one of the mini-larks to go on all evening. Nowadays they are doing full-length plays, but don’t worry, MTV fans. Charles Busch’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife skips along at the finger-popping pace of an SNL skit and doesn’t tire out for a marathon’s worth of outlandish comic sprints.

A blue-hair warning of what we’re in for: playwright Busch is best known for his off-Broadway drag acts and for such rude parodies as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Psycho Beach Party.

The action here revolves around neurotic Upper West Side dilettante Marjorie Taub (Peggy Melozzi). The character was created for Linda Lavin and played by Valerie Harper on Broadway and national tour — too hip for PPAC, it never did hit Providence.

Marjorie is a wreck. Her shrink died recently, leaving her bereft, if not bonkers. She walked into the Manhattan Disney store and found that the ceramic figures of Mickey and Goofy and such were mysteriously dropping out of her hands when she picked them up. Marjorie refuses to acknowledge that any volition was involved in those coincidental "accidents."

Not to worry. Hubby Ira (Jim Sullivan), the allergist of the title, gladly paid for the damage. He retired largely to be able to spend more time with Marjorie, i.e., to cater to her every whim. The good doctor also runs a free clinic in Harlem, and is a brilliant lecturer, adored by medical students, etc. Sullivan plays him with a sunny satisfaction that doesn’t slip into smugness for cheap laughs, so we stay with him. The idea is that Ira is another example of the unacknowledged and unappreciated perfection of Marjorie’s life. Even their building’s doorman, an Iraqi named Mohammed (Walter Perez), appears to be on the Earth to patiently keep her pleased.

Except for her mother, of course. If Frieda (Marilyn Murphy Meardon) were any more self-involved, Manhattan streets would appear devoid of life to her. Nothing her daughter has done or can do is good enough. She’s a sunny pall-caster, too. Every time the Taubs sit down to eat, Freida starts blurting about her bowel movements, until appetites are quelled. Since we have to spend two acts with her, it wouldn’t do to hate her, so Meardon rescues the woman from harridanhood by sheer intensity of blind purpose. Frieda has no idea that she’s not the most well-intentioned mother in the world.

With this sort of upbringing, Marjorie ipso facto has been riddled with a self-loathing that in her best moments rises to mere self-hatred. She calls herself a loser, intellectually inept. She seems allergic to her very own self. Melozzi makes Marjorie funnier than she might be, as well as a little poignant, by playing her straight — that is, as flat-out agonized as she would be in a serious drama. After all, even a hypochondriac feels sick.

Into this hotbed of solipsism strolls Lee Green, née Lillian Greenblat (Paula Faber), a woman more accomplished and well connected than most Greek goddesses. She is a long-lost childhood schoolmate of Marjorie, who quickly grows to adore her again. Lee has been everywhere, met everyone, done everything. She ran a discotheque in Hong Kong, had a love affair with Günter Grass, is a confidant of Pat Nixon. She transcends being a name-dropper to become a kind of hip Zelig, often having been there to catalyze things when cultural history happened: Andy (Warhol) "used to come by for a can or soup," see, and Diana listened rapt at a dinner party when Lee was explaining how horrible land mines are to civilians. Faber does a good job propelling Lee through Marjorie’s psyche, pumping up the necessary charisma without coming on too strong. Deftly balanced.

By a sort of osmosis of mutual appreciation, Marjorie quickly grows some confidence of her own upon this reacquainting. Playwright Busch has fun jerking us around with the possibilities of this relationship. Is she too good to be true — or even to really exist? Isn’t this just the sort of person that the hyper-needy Marjorie might fantasize to bolster her self-image? Hmmm. But Busch keeps us sufficiently entertained by all these people. We (OK, I) don’t much mind a lack of deeper significance about interpersonal relationships other than that approach-avoidance conflicts are inevitable if you stick around after the opening handshake. Homo sapiens just wanna have friends.

When the theatrical history of the turn of this century is written, odds are that The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife will not rate a footnote. That’s just fine. Along with addictive sitcoms and empty calories, frothy little comedies like this can remain our guilty little secret.