Emotionally and physically Lenny Bruce is a challenging and a harrowing role for an actor.  On stage for almost the entire play, he has to portray a superb stand-up comic as well as a tragic, collapsing human being.  In the case of Sandy BAron, who this week assumes the role of "Lenny" on Broadway, he has to contend with the memory not only of Lenny Bruce but also of Cliff Gorman.

Gorman's performance was electrifying and indelible.  Baron is less spectacular, but he is convincingly in touch with the character.  Facing the reviewers for the first time Thursday, he began unsteadily, but when he stepped into Bruce's shoes as a brash nightclub comic, Baron took command of himself.

Having served his own indenture as a nightclub comic, Baron is particularly funny delivering Bruce's routines.  Deftly he changes his voice in dialogue with himself, imitating the mad gallery of Bruce characters as if he had invented them, and using the hand microphone as an extension of his voice box.  With his lean face and dark rimmed eyes, Baron looks in fact a bit like Bruce.  Having previously seen him in lighter circumstances on television, I was surprised by the intensity of his acting.

What he is not able to do is conceal the frailties of the play surrounding him.  The story Julian Barry has extracted from Bruce's life tends to sanctify and, in the end, even to solemnize Bruce rather than to explore his obsessions.

As director, Tom O'Horgan handles his actors ably, but many of his theatricalizations seem superimposed rather than endemic.  This is especially true of the mythical mumbo-jumbo that gets the play off to such a dulsutory start.  So much of the staging depends on the initial sensation - and it necessarily loses impact in a second viewing.  But if you have not seen "Lenny" once, with Sandy BAron it still provides one of Broadway's more provocative evenings.

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