“Critic’s Choice” and Other Comedies: Break A Leg, Cantorial, and Critic’s Choice

Ira Levin—the same author who terrified us with Rosemary’s Baby and The Boys from Brazil also, astonishingly, wrote laugh-out-loud comedies. Here are three of his most side-splitting offerings, the pick of the litter—the critic’s choice. Critic’s ChoiceThis comic fable of fictional theater critic Parker Ballantine is a giddy excursion to a lost era of cocktails, tuxedos, witty quips, and urbane ripostes that “crackle and throw out sparks” (New York Morning Telegraph).Break A LegA beleaguered theater company uses its combined talents to drive out the brutish critic who’s been decimating their productions. If Dangerous Liaisons mated with She Loves Me, their child would be Break A Leg––the most howlingly riotous of all Levin’s creations.CantorialA synagogue-to-condo conversion is haunted by the ghost of its former cantor, in this buoyant comedy that’s part ghost story, part musical, and—as Levin put it, “probably the warmest thing I’ve ever written.” Read more