Spotlight: A Thousand Clowns  Herb Gardner's 1962 play,
presented here as a tight two-act, doesn't exactly electrify on
the basis of its thematic conflict: Is it better to sell out to
the man or maintain one's bohemian free spirit? Here in 2007, I
know plenty of people willing to sell out. They're just looking
for buyers. The set-up sees Murray (Bob Davis) living in a
fairly squalid New York bachelor pad with his nephew Nick
(Andrew Lentz). Murray has recently quit a lucrative TV writing
gig for the Chuckles the Chipmunk Show, which apparently
required him to make all sorts of artistic and personal
compromises. Resplendent in his indolent unemployment, Murray
falls out of the figurative hammock with the arrival of two
social workers. Albert (John Middleton) is the pinched, prissy
straight man; Sandra (Stacia Rice) is all earnest innocence with
an itch transparently in need of scratching. It turns out that,
after Murray took on the care of his nephew from his even more
outrageously bohemian sister, he failed t