`Evening With Ustinov` Is A Full Course Of Laughs

May 14, 1992|By Sid Smith, Entertainment writer.

Only for a brief time does ``An Evening with Peter Ustinov`` threaten to be the respectably witty, high-minded oral autobiography one would expect from its subject`s life, talents, experiences and acquaintances.

In reality, ``Evening`` is the talk-show anecdote raised to art, tripping its way through light-hearted, possibly spurious tattletales on John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier and ``Casablanca`` director Michael Curtiz to an astonishing aural enactment of dog yelps, car sputterings, an infant`s gastric disturbances, a flamenco guitar and even the odd noise made by a reed when not attached to its oboe.

In a way, Ustinov`s uproariously funny, sometimes indulgent tour de force begins in his mother`s womb and ends with the scatological noises he very well made as a baby shortly after birth. Along its three-hour way, there are satirical gems of show business and political figures, barbs graced with his sublimely feather-brained innocence and lack of malice, snapshots nonetheless scorching Curtiz and Mervyn LeRoy, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Mary and even Georg Solti, a member of Wednesday`s audience at the Shubert Theatre.

An incomparable mimic and raconteur, Ustinov proves he`s also one of our most erudite and sophisticated clowns. But clown he is, and the same impish, unpredictable rowdiness and comedic genius that give such glow to ``Topkapi`` and such eerieness to Nero in ``Quo Vadis`` are omnipresent. For the first half, he valiantly fakes the high road.

The second half rambles more freely through barroom jokes and standup setups, inspired by encounters with the famous and far-flung, from Charles de Gaulle to impoverished peasants in a Guatemalan hovel who prove to be poignant butts for a typically Ustinovian snipe at ``The Bionic Woman.``

His caterwauling instrumentals are clown Ustinov at his silliest, just as he`s at his best recounting the filming of ``Beau Brummel,`` a yarn that typically casts him as quizzical everyman tyrannized by everyone from Elizabeth Taylor and her queerly sheared poodles to the short-tempered lowlife in charge of the movie`s horse brigade.