[Ed. Note: Melissa Rose Bernardo reviewed The Tale of the Allergist's Wife for TheaterMania during the show's run this spring at Manhattan Theatre Club. Now that the production has transferred to Broadway, we offer a re-edited version of that review below.]

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In The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, what, you may wonder, is Charles Busch's obsession with bowel movements? The playwright has always had a knack for pushing the boundaries of good taste (Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, anyone?), but all this toilet talk is something of a shock for an uptown audience that wasn't weaned on South Park. Yet Busch is one of the only writers I know who can use his potty mouth to produce [...]

In The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, what, you may wonder, is Charles Busch's obsession with bowel movements? The playwright has always had a knack for pushing the boundaries of good taste (Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, anyone?), but all this toilet talk is something of a shock for the Manhattan Theatre Club audience -- after all, the mature ladies and gents weren't weaned on "South Park". But Busch is one of the only playwrights I know who can use his potty mouth to produce such clean comedy.

A bowel-centric Jewish geriatric named Frieda isn't the focus of Allergist's Wife (though she gets her share of laughs). The play belongs to Marjorie, and the show belongs to Linda Lavin. On the surface,[...]