The Last Bastion

The closed world of a Boston gentlemen's club slowly cracks open in Wensberg's sporadically amusing but unsatisfying satire. When Demetria Constantine, the ambitious chairwoman of the Mass. Licensing Board, holds hostage the Charles Club's main asset-its liquor license-unless the club begins admitting women, members embark on an assortment of panicked schemes and debates over their superannuated status quo. Local real-estate maven Leslie Sample, by virtue of her ambiguous first name and ``low, husky'' telephone voice, attempts to crash the club's gender barrier; while Seymour Gland, its least scrupulous member, tries both matchmaking between Demetria and a club member and a merger proposal with the club's all-women counterpart. Some dialogue passages and individual episodes display wit, but the humor here is never catalyzed. Backstairs vignettes with club staff are timeworn; the designation of certain club members as capitalized entities-the Architectural Critic, the Distinguished Poet, the Eldest Member-are merely mannered. Although replete with local color and the social mores of club life, this work never reaches its comic potential. (Mar.)