After a night of boozing it up with my friend Angela and her fiancé, Adam, I was invited to spend the night at their apartment on the Lower East Side. I enjoy spending the night at their apartment, which is cozy and well-decorated, but the best reason is because their place is so quiet and dark in the morning.

Around 11:30 I woke up and Angela fixed us her specialty - the egg in a frame. Now, I've never heard of that breakfast treat before, but I loved it. What she does is cut a hole in a piece of bread and break an egg into it, then fry it up. Quite the tasty treat, I must say.

You want to know another great reason to spend the night there? Angela is a make-up artist and costume designer, and she has this make- up box filled with cosmetics. I so enjoyed trying on all the different eye shadows and experimenting.

Around 2:40, we hopped a cab for the 3:00 curtain of Honour at the Belasco. You know the Belasco is one of the most beautiful theatres on Broadway. There's gorgeous mahogany woodwork with stunning Tiffany lighting and perfect orchestra seating. Ah, if only the play had been as interesting as the décor.

Joanna Murray-Smith's new play, Honour, delves into the abyss of epiphanies of personal and universal truths with the emotional intensity of a self-help textbook.

Filled with cerebral witticisms, cutting dialogue and appropriated Mamet-esque cadences, Honour wallows far too much in the quagmire of frigid pathos and a hackneyed masculine mid-life crisis. The greatest tragedy is that Murray-Smith offers a staid and antiquated approach to an all too familiar scene which suffers further due to its contemporary setting.

Jane Alexander in the title role is a devoted wife and an acclaimed writer, who has put her life on the back burner for 32 years in order to emotionally support her husband (a newspaper columnist) and daughter.

Gus (Robert Foxworth) is a pompous member of the literatti in search of a mirror, and he finds it when Claudia, writing a book "Genius in Journalism", approaches him for a chapter in his honor. Enchanted by her supposed intellectual and physical beauty, Gus decides to leave his wife and daughter. Thus begins the foray into trite predictability.

Indeed, the greatest asset is Jane Alexander's return to the stage after a five year post as Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. Miss Alexander's performance is impressive and her intelligence beams, though she alone cannot salvage Murray-Smith's high-brow script from tedium.

Robert Foxworth's Gus is well-acted and carries a befitting girth of intellectualism and pomposity. Laura Linney is appropriately annoying and clawing.

Enid Graham, who received a Tony nomination as the daughter caught in her parents' tumultuous crossfire, is wonderful vocally, but needs to keep her hands in Jane Greenwood's hideous canary-yellow painter's pant pockets. You would have thought that Miss Graham was trying to take flight with all those exaggerated gesticulations. Is it really necessary to make a hand-gesture for every syllable?

Jane Greenwood's design team has made a mockery of her name,virtually throughout the entire season. Her costumes have been so devastatingly hit or miss. The best aspect of her designs for Honour is her monochrome palette, which fits well into Derek McLane's stark set. For Miss Alexander, Greenwood builds a lovely Zoran knock-off of pewter gray, and her suit for Mr. Foxworth is rightly stuffy. But let's go back to the canary-yellow painter's pants, shall we? Why? Mercifully, I'd not seen that horrible style since the Eighties, and that is exactly the point.

The Hawthorn red suit worn by the infidel of the show is only correct in color. The jacket doesn't match the skirt and the tight Chinese top underneath makes no sense with the suit whatsoever.

Oh, and please don't get me started about that saccharine tulle slung up in the wigs at Pimpernel. However, on the flip side of the coin, her costumes for The Deep Blue Sea were wonderful. Seems as if Greenwood's best work comes from 1900 to 1950, and she should never attempt to go beyond the perimeters of her talents.

It is truly baffling that anyone would want to tell this tale and puzzling that someone thought it worthy enough to bring to Broadway.

In short, Honour is as passionate and compelling as a seventh grade health book - with about half the suspense.

Afterwards, we strolled over to "Joe Allen's" and cozied up to the bar for a couple of iced cappuccinos. The manager, Chris (not to be confused with the nasty bartender Chris), came over and chatted with us for a while. He is truly the most delightful person, and we enjoyed discussing and shredding some of our most hated plays of the season and praising Ragtime and Cabaret. It's so refreshing when you meet someone who "gets it" and has the same tastes as you. We were starving and wanted some Polish food and were getting ready to leave when Chris came back over and bought our drinks. Now wasn't that the sweetest?

We walked and walked through the huddled masses yearning for a cab in Times Square all the way over to Park Avenue, where we finally found one and headed to the East Village. All the way down, Angela and I were quoting all of Edith Massey's lines from Desperate Living, "Hey little birdie, want some pizza?" and "You, Lieutenant Wilson, it's your turn to service me!" And, of course, let's not forget her star turn in Pink Flamingos, "Oh, Cotton, that egg man ain't comin', and I know it." Or how about, "Oh yeah, I want them scrambled and hard boiled and poached and sunny side up and oh, oh God, oh goddamn!" Really, those John Waters films are sheer twisted genius.

On Avenue A, between Seventh and Eighth Streets, lies my favorite Polish eatery, "Odessa's" (the one on the left). You may remember me mentioning this place when we saw Rent last year. There was hardly anyone in the place, so we had a quiet little booth and sipped our Diet Cokes and knoshed on the most amazing potato pancakes and sauerkraut perogies. I'm telling you people,this is the best Polish food in town. "Sure", some of you will say, "But what about 'Veselka'?" Let me tell you something, "Veselka" used to be the place, before they redecorated. And now the food isn't as good. "Odessa's" potato pancakes are crisp and slightly oily. The perogies are huge and stuffed with fresh ingredients. Oh Lord, I love to smother them in sour cream for the first bite, then apple sauce for the second and so on.

Stuffed like ticks, we strolled around peeking into various stores, until I realized what time it was. Then I hopped a cab back home to watch the Drama Desk Awards on NY1.

Let's talk about that a little, shall we? As usual, the awards are so poorly taped; horrible lighting that goes from blinding to pitch black, and the sound that ebbs and flows constantly. That said, however, I'm still grateful that NY1 airs them every year.

The Drama Desk nominates regardless whether the show is Off-Broadway, way Off-Broadway or Broadway. Now let's chat a little about some of their nominations. In the best actress category they nominated only Alice Ripley from Sideshow. Now that's just flat out rude. Either nominate both her and Emily Skinner or neither of them. For the best musical they denied The Sound of Music a nomination, leaving only two other musicals in that category. Now come on, is it going to kill 'em to at least nominate the show? Another category that was strange (and yet funny) was that for book of a musical - there was only one nominee, Terrence McNally for Ragtime.

How about Audra McDonald, egregiously overlooked in the best featured actress in a musical category? Horrifying - don't you think?

Let's talk about some people/plays that were surprisingly nominated. Forever Tango for best musical. Shocking isn't it? How about Renoly Santiago from The Capeman? You remember him? I'm sure you don't. He was The Umbrella Man. Boy, what a brilliant and spell-binding performance that was. I'm sure you still can't stop thinking about it. Melissa Errico for High Society. Well, since she's been telling us for several months just how amazing she is, it should come as no surprise. After all, if she didn't tell us how fabulous she is, we may have never known it. Nominated for set design was Derek McLane for Misalliance, who had lots of books that fell down - fascinating! Probably one of my favorites was Argemina Affonso's nomination for best costume design. Luis Bravo's Forever Tango -- it's called the Puerto Rican Day parade in Spanish Harlem. Check it out.

I must admit, however, that the winners were mostly appropriate, but we'll discuss that when I post my winners the Thursday before the Tonys.

Without a doubt, the highlight of the evening was Alan Cumming singing "I Don't Care Much" from Cabaret. I must tell you that I've played back that number about ten times already and doubt that I will ever tire of it. Also, Bebe Neuwirth and Joel Grey, who presented afterwards, were hilarious. Now I'm sure that all the numbers performed were fantastic live, but due to poor sound the rest of them fell flat.

By the way, if you're interested in knowing who won the Drama Desk Awards, you can go to Playbill On-line and read them there.

In closing, if you enjoy Polish food, then head on down to "Odessa's" in the East Village. Want to make a special breakfast treat? Try Angela's famous egg in a frame. Now remember this: whenever you go to "Joe Allen's" on 46th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues, make sure you tell them that I sent you, and say hello to Chris the manager and Bradley the waiter. Can't sleep at night? Just go check out Honour - it's Broadway's current answer to Melatonin.

Cheers!

See you Thursday...

TinasNYC@aol.com

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