Wit Play

David Knapp's "Staccato" at the Tiffany sweeps us along for a time with its driving music, sprightly dialogue, well-measured performances and ebullient direction. Playwright Knapp, whose characters fire dialogue at one another with staccato rapidity, manages enough pithy aphorisms to temporarily disguise the fact that his play is meandering and somewhat mean-spirited.

Some of them you know. Some you don't. But the following artists, entertainers and executives have one thing in common: We're counting on each to mae a significant impact or difference in their respective fields this year. Sure, there will be thers who make a splash, but after we talked with dozens of people who work in entertainment and the arts, these were the names mentioned most often. You might say that Jim Carrey was a face to watch in '94, and you would be right.

If Los Angeles were a private citizen, maybe it could sue--for defamation of character. Take this : In Los Angeles, said ABC's David Brinkley last Sunday, "it is estimated there are 130,000 members of street gangs. That's equal to about 17 of the Army's infantry divisions, but more heavily armed." OK, he was just joking--it was the legendary Brinkley wit at play.

He's 35, tall, blond and muscular, square-jawed and pony-tailed. She's 29, petite, dark, sharp-featured, wears her hair pulled tightly back. He talks quickly, his words often repeating and bouncing off each other in a rhythmic scat. Her speech is more measured, orderly. He's San Francisco born and bred; she's the daughter of a French father and American mother, reared on both continents. He favors jeans and a T-shirt.

The best drama on television in the past year has been NBC's "The Tonight Show," as Johnny Carson emotionally retired from it, Jay Leno inherited it and David Letterman fought for it. Every detail seemed to be recorded.

"This is my play's last scene." That line from "Wit," a play about a college professor dying of cancer, came to mind as U.S. television went to high alert and half-mast Saturday, draping itself in black crepe for hours to report the demise of space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven over Palestine, Texas. The irony, of course, is that a disaster was required to make Columbia cosmic TV. The nation's manned space program had become so routine to many that news of the Jan.

A pox on 1976, the year the National Federation of State High School Assns. said yes to the designated hitter. I still get queasy thinking about it: one one-dimensional player after another stepping up to the plate to swing a bat. Nothing else. No throwing skills required. No fielding necessary. You don't even need a mitt--just a batting glove. Talk about your tools of ignorance. Wasn't it bad enough when the NFSHSA (whew!) approved the use of metal bats in 1974, forever inflating batting averages and egos everywhere, as well as ruining some perfectly good dugout chatter?

On June 5, 1983, John Glines accepted a best play Tony Award for his production of Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy." In his nationally televised speech, the producer thanked everyone who'd been a part of the show--including his then-partner and lover Lawrence Lane. At the end of the heady evening, Fierstein's limo deposited Glines in front of his Brooklyn apartment, where cheering neighbors had festooned the building with a banner and streamers.

Actress Marion Ross dons a trio of hats--playing Franz Kafka's mother, a toadying secretary and a passionless fiancee--in Marvin Chernoff's "Kafka's Kastle Kareer," opening Thursday at Company of Angels Theatre. Observing love, death and the corporate world, six actors play a range of roles, including Kafka's disapproving mother and father, an anti-social hypochondriac, a naive virgin, an idealistic whore and an Adolf Eichmann incarnation.

It was only two weeks ago that Christopher Reeve used his forum at the Academy Awards to urge Hollywood to take more risks. And now, like a thunderbolt answering his plea, comes "Profit." Can a weekly drama about a homicidal super-heel have a future in prime time? Think so? Well, what if this twisted psychopath spends much of his time at home creating evil schemes in front of a computer while, um, nude? A bit more problematic, perhaps. Wouldn't he catch cold?