UH-OH! TOMMY TUNES OUT

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By Marc Peyser

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TOMMY TUNE HAS WON NINE TONY awards; after last week, he may be asked to give a few back. In a one-two punch reminiscent of the Buffalo Bills' consecutive Super Bowl debacles, Tune opened two misguided Broadway musicals in two days. First, The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public, a sequel to the 1978 "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," and then the revival of Grease. If Tune doesn't deserve all the blame-he's credited as the codirector/cochoreographer of "Wherehouse" and the "production supervisor" on "Grease"-that may merely be an effort to smudge his fingerprints.

The musicals share several unfortunate traits, not least the belief that assaulting the senses is the same as engaging them. Both stack the deck with pre-show gimmicks-vintage '50s tunes blasting inside and outside the "Grease" theater, roulette wheels and slot-machine sound effects at "Wherehouse" (the bordello has migrated to Las Vegas, where it sells stock to pay off an IRS debt). Both repeatedly interrupt the action with annoying stand-up comics, apparently to distract from the torpid plot development.

If "Grease" fares better, that's only because it started with quality material and adds an amusing, if marginally musical, turn by Rosie O'Donnell as the wisecracking Rizzo. But Jeff Calhoun, who directed and choreographed under Tune's "supervision," buries a simple show about '50s adolescent angst under a campy parade of fluorescent sets, cutesy choreography and more wigs than a John Waters movie (the Teen Angel wears a two-foot-high orange bouffant). Still, the virtually tuneless, danceless "Wherehouse" manages the most offensive number of the Broadway season-a phone-sex scene with splay-legged ladies caged inside transparent cubes, and bald men in underwear, preparing for love. "I've cleaned the lint in between my toes / Trimmed the hair in my ears and nose," they sing. When Tommy Tune stoops, it's a long way down.

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