'Kaufman & Co.'

"SPAULDING: I see. What do you get for not playing?

"RAVELLI: Twelve dollars an hour.

"SPAULDING: Well, cut me off a piece of that, will you?

"RAVELLI: Now, for rehearsing we make a special rate, fifteen dollars an hour.

"SPAULDING: That's for rehearsing? What do you get for not rehearsing?

"RAVELLI: You couldn't afford it. You see if we don't rehearse we don't play, and if we don't play that runs into money.

"SPAULDING: How much do you want to run into an open man-hole?

"RAVELLI: Just the cover charge.

"SPAULDING: Well, if you're ever in the neighborhood, drop in."

Et cetera. Funny stuff, but a whole lot funnier if your mind's eye can see Groucho, with his cigar and his glasses and his moustache, and your mind's ear can hear his lightning-fast voice. Unfortunately there aren't that many people under 60 who remember Groucho that clearly, which leaves one to wonder how much staying power "Animal Crackers" really has, since it is Groucho to the core, as another quotable quote makes irresistibly plain:

"The principal animals inhabiting the African jungle are Moose, Elks, and Knights of Pythias. Of course you all know what a moose is. That's big game. The first day I shot two bucks. That was the biggest game we had. Of course, you all know what a moose is. A moose runs around the floor, eats cheese, and is chased by the cat. The Elks, however, stay up in the hills, most of the year. But in the spring they come down for their annual convention. It is very interesting to watch them come down to the water hole, and you should see them when they find it is only a water hole. What those Elks are looking for is an Elka-hole.

"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don't know."

Lovely stuff, but it's Marx, not Kaufman. For all his irreverence and his speed with a riposte, Kaufman didn't do the wild, off-the-wall rimshots that were Groucho's stock in trade. Paired with Hart he could be hugely witty and amusing, but his roots were in the conventional Broadway theater rather than in vaudeville, where the Marx Brothers got their education. As the collaborations with Ferber illustrate, he was capable of writing sentimental melodrama as well as comedy (there are more gulps than guffaws in those three plays) and even paired with Lardner -- a match that would seem to have been made in heaven -- he played it pretty much down the middle. Lardner had longed all his life for a Broadway success, and "June Moon" gave him one, but his most imaginative and durable plays are those strange, beguiling one-act exercises in inspired absurdism: "Cora, or Fun at a Spa," "I Gaspiri," "The Tridget of Greva."

So we are left with the Hart collaborations. Dated references are problems in all three of those included here, especially "The Man Who Came to Dinner," but all of them are regularly revived by theatrical groups both professional and amateur, and presumably the references are brought up-to-date: Julia Roberts substitutes for ZaSu Pitts, Tony Blair for Anthony Eden, et cetera. I'd love to have seen the 2000 New York revival of "The Man Who Came to Dinner," with Nathan Lane playing the immortal Sheridan Whiteside, or the 1984 revival of "You Can't Take It With You," with Jason Robards as Grandpa Vanderhof. No doubt both revivals underscored a central aspect of Kaufman & Hart plays: They may be dated in some ways, but they're tightly constructed and move at a brisk pace, their characters are eccentric but deeply human, and their humor transcends the limitations of period.

So what Kaufman & Co. tells me is that I was right to love Six Plays by Kaufman & Hart as much as I did, but that when he hitched up with someone else, he couldn't take it with him. •

Jonathan Yardley's e-mail address is yardleyj@washpost.com.