NO PICKLE, NO PERFORMANCE

In his roles of director, producer, actor, and playwright, Kennedy has worked in summer stock with many of the theater's major figures, and he has anecdotes to tell about all of them in a style popularized by the Reader's Digest. Catty, sly, indiscreet, ribald, and occasionally vicious--also occasionally hilarious--he spins his stories with an unseemly emphasis on the sexual. Two interminable pages of this slim volume are devoted to an appreciation of John Travolta's ""behind."" Alternately fawning and tyrannical in the presence of stars, Kennedy has lots to say about the business of the theater, dwelling longest on his production of The Front Page and its star, the late Robert Ryan, whom he eulogizes. When he runs out of steam, and out of amusing tales, he is reduced to unabashedly recalling favorable reviews of his own performances. This one is best forgotten.