For two nights only, we did the entire eighty-eight-minute show ourselves, with no act break. In order to give Nora and myself a breather, I had handed Fred a parody that bemoaned all the imitation Sondheim writers I was meeting in the workshops at BMI and The New School. It was called “Too Many Sondheims.”

I remember that the show was a little much for Nora and me to handle on our own. By the time we had eviscerated Amadeus, Evita, My Fair Lady,Timbuktu(!), Merrily We Roll Along, 42nd Street, The King And I, and Woman of the Year, we were exhausted. We started missing cues because we couldn’t make the costume changes without help; we dripped with sweat through the entire show, and we could hardly keep a straight face. But the audience ate it up.

The success of these two performances was such that Palsson’s offered to book us for a run. Someone suggested we add two other performers and turn the show into a full-fledged revue. I liked the idea, because I had written a number of other parodies that required at least four actors. It would also take a lot of the performing pressure off Nora and me. So it was on to Palsson’s Cabaret Theatre. That’s “Theatre” with a capital T — and that stands for “Trouble!”

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