The Tale of the Allergist's Wife

A middle-aged doctor's wife who's read all the hip books and seen all the trendy plays is experiencing a mid-life crisis when a childhood friend shows up at her door. The references in this novel are all of New York City. The accents are very New York, and the hypochondriac mother who lives down the hall is quintessential New York. But the laughs are universal, and the acting is superb. Amy Aquino, Richard Kind, Estelle Harris, and JoBeth Williams inhabit their characters so completely, and with such presence and expression, that listeners will feel that they're right in the story, drinking wine and discussing Nietzsche in a Manhattan condo. B.P. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

March 31, 2008
Busch's 2000 play transfers perfectly from the stage to audio, largely because the small casts is so larger than life (bordering on caricatures) that the characters don't need to be seen to be understood. As the title character, Amy Aquino's slightly nasal, tortured voice embodies this Jewish housewife's angst, and Richard Kind does an excellent job of conveying her husband's artless but endearing self-importance with his carefully chosen words and deliberately sonorous tone. Seinfeld
's Estelle Harris, as Aquino's mother, steals many scenes with her screeching voice and rants about bowel movements. The appreciative audience clapping and laughing enhances the comedy. On the final track, a surprisingly mild-mannered Busch discusses the real-life model for the allergist and how the wife developed from a character he created when he was starting out as an actor.