BRICK MALLERY PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR

There is a genre of subversive humor--exemplified most notably by the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks and, on radio, Peter Sellers’s “Goon Shows” for the BBC--that can refresh, as well as tickle, audiences. It is iconoclastic, mischievous, cynical, even silly. When pulled off cleverly and with high energy, it can have a wide appeal. Subversive humor has always worked well on radio, which may explain why so many of today’s younger audio dramatists resort to it. Canadian writer/director Mark Bornstein and his crew have a good time with their Brick Mallery episodes, yet another send-up of Raymond Chandler. The listener may not have as much fun as they do, for the jokes only intermittently flare with the requisite panache. But the listener with a taste for such fare WILL have fun. And that’s what counts. Right? Y.R. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB 98]