It's not every day that a comedy writer gets a laugh on every line he intends to be thigh-slappingly funny, but Paul Rudnick does so with Pride and Joy, the first of the four playlets that make up The New Century, now at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theatre.

Rudnick is getting no small measure of help from director Nicholas Martin and certainly from Linda Lavin, who appears in the opening entry as chatty Long Island matron Helene Nadler. Wearing an expensive coiffure and shiny suit that costume designer William Ivey Long knew would be just the thing, Mrs. Nadler is addressing a very particular support group about the diverse sexual leanings of her three children. Explaining what a[...]