In the following excerpt, Eder details the comical absurdities that take place within "Once in a Lifetime."

When Once in a Lifetime, the first play that Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman wrote together, was revived here a number of years ago it ran for exactly one performance.

The Circle in the Square's leisurely but delightful version, which opened here last night, should do a great deal better. Some of the bones have fallen from the meat of this 1930 comedy; its insance logic has lost some of its logic, but there is plenty of insanity left.

And with John Lithgow sagging gently into a very large comic performance as George, the Heaven-favored fool who out-imbeciles Hollywood, and George Irving as athundering film tycoon constructed entirely of tiny gas-filled balloons, the Circle production surmounts the play's weakesses and its own blank spots to give New York something pretty...