This honeymoon doesn't last

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

•	'The Honeymooners: The Lost Episodes' Hawai'i Theatre 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. today; 4 p.m. tomorrow $17.50-$37 528-0506

The mostly older audience that took in the opening night of this annual fund-raiser for Manoa Valley Theatre undoubtedly remembered most of the broad comedy elements from firsthand experience — or at least from the syndicated reruns.

A younger group might find it incomprehensibly corny.

But for a time, it was like watching the original "Jackie Gleason Show," with the friendly characters of Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton resurrected for the stage.

To their credit, local television anchorman Joe Moore and nationally syndicated game-show host Pat Sajak do a good job mimicking the Gleason and Art Carney mannerisms and vocal patterns that continue to make them unique after 50 years of television comedy.

But although "The Lost Episodes" is credited to the original writing team that produced "The Honeymooners," the four episodes making up the show are obviously dated and loosely linked sitcoms that don't easily hold up for a full evening of live theater.

By intermission, most of the delight has gone. You've seen all you're going to see, and Act 2 is merely more of the same.

Kramden and Norton are gloriously up to their old schemes and traditional troubles: Ralph gets immersed in astrology while getting up the courage to ask for a raise; he mistakenly thinks he has been fired and scrambles to retrieve an insulting letter to his boss; they fall for a scheme selling a bogus hair restorer and try their hand at songwriting.

Each bit plays about 40 predictable minutes. In this case, the predictability adds to the charm, since watching Ralph squirm provides much of the fun.

Moore has obviously studied Gleason for this performance. He has mastered the pratfalls and the physical shtick: the nervous pacing, the broad facial expressions and the spastic arm gestures. It's an over-the-top characterization (but so was Gleason's) filled with mugging a full spectrum of emotions from abject humiliation to bloated pride and anger.

Appropriately balancing Moore's bellicose, bus-driving Ralph Kramden is Sajak's super-fastidious sewer worker Ed Norton. Sajak is delightful at recreating the nasal intonations, the flinching and the endless loosening up that make the character everybody's favorite.

Jeannie Rogers completes the picture as Ralph's long-suffering wife, Alice, but lacks the droll, deadpan squelch factor with which Audrey Meadows stamped the part. Several small supporting roles complete the cast, directed by Jim Hutchison.

Set designer Karen Archibald re-creates the plain and spare apartment that justifies Ralph and Alice's last name. It looks painfully small on the Hawai'i Theatre stage but leaves room for a couple of rolling platforms to supply a change in locale.

"The Honeymooners" is a memory piece whose fun fades too early.