Directed by Paul Benedict, the cast starred Nathan Lane (as Dr. Jason Pepper), Kate Nelligan, Robert Clohessy, and Faith Prince.
[3] This version switched the names of the sanitariums to the arrangement mentioned above and added an extra scene to the beginning of Dunelawn, along with numerous other minor changes.
[2] Wheel-chaired marriage counselor Dr. Jason Pepper treats his patients in a country club setting complete with a clay tennis court and freely flowing cocktails.
Roy and April Pitt arrive as the play opens; they are recently married movie stars who are already seeking couples therapy because of their frequent bickering.
As they wait for Bruno to bring along the next patient, we learn about the two nurses, their own bad habits, past lives, regrets and their striving for reformation.
The attitude is cynical, but the author's humor is tonic rather than toxic... Mr. McNally's needle is right on target - particularly in the first play...a subcutaneous probe of contemporary manners."
What survives in Bad Habits is not so much a focused evening of theater as a pair of overextended burlesque sketches that live or die from joke to joke... Mr. McNally is incapable of being completely unfunny, and, in his better moments, he imagines a Dr. Feelgood whose unctuously whispered words of wisdom are babytalk and a skirt-chasing gardener whose libidinal urges are written all over his anatomy, not to mention his face.