Cockney

America and Britain truly are two cultures "separated by a common language," as Winston Churchill once observed, but Jerry Seinfeld's explorations of British slanguage are a bit of a barney. In fact, the British slang has some U.S viewers tearing out their Barnett Fair. Here's a cheat sheet for the American Express commercials that open with Jerry before a London audience, bombing with the punchline: "So I got off the elevator, cut in line, and said, 'What is this, the seventh-inning stretch?

Soon after I wrote an enthusiastic review of Sexy Beast, the letters, e-mail and phone calls began. But they weren't the usual protests of "Did we see the same movie?" Instead, the questions were "Did we hear the same movie?" and "Why didn't you say it needed subtitles?" Jonathan Glazer's brilliant directing debut is a black-humored, often brutal Brit gangster picture with a paint-peeling performance by Ben Kingsley - yes, Gandhi - as a psychopathic thug. And it's in English.

Like Reservoir Dogs with a Cockney bark - but without Quentin Tarantino's filmmaking chops - the British entry 44 Inch Chest offers a tough-talking meditation on jealousy and marital betrayal. Its cast is stellar - Stephen Dillane, John Hurt, Ian McShane, Tom Wilkinson, and, at the center of it all, a broke-down bad man, Ray Winstone. But its script, from David Scinto and Louis Mellis, the cowriters of Sexy Beast , is nothing more than a heavy rotation of expletives and redundant riffing.

In Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw proposes that how one speaks determines one's place in society. Similarly, how the actors speak determines, to a large extent, the success of a production of the play. In Shaw's 1914 comedy, later adapted into My Fair Lady, a linguistics expert bets he can transform a common Cockney flower girl into a lady by teaching her to speak upper-class English. For the play to be convincing, the English accents, especially in the key roles of the linguist, Professor Henry Higgins, and the flower girl, Eliza Dolittle, must be spot-on.

The idea for Michael Ogborn's Caf? Puttanesca springs from a supposed custom of Italian prostitutes, who would gather together after a busy working night. Each is supposed to bring some leftovers to toss into a simmering pot for a late meal. Ogborn's show, which is set in a cafe in Amsterdam three years after the end of World War II, takes much the same approach, and the results aren't particularly appetizing. The period after the war, when so many lost souls scrambled to survive by any means possible, deserves more substantial exploration in fictional genres.

The national company of Me and My Girl is in residence at the Playhouse Theater through the weekend, in case you're looking for a good party. The spirit of giddy revelry runs high in this revival of the 1937 London musical about a Cockney hustler who inherits a title. The songs have an irrepressible gaiety, the plot is silly, the dialogue is corny-funny and there isn't anyone in sight thinking of anything more serious than the next dance. This touring production has something of the afterthought air that second companies often do. It could never be mistaken for the crack Broadway version that was built around the gifted clowning of London's Robert Lindsay, who has since been replaced by Jim Dale.

Many people lining up to see Me and My Girl at Harrah's Marina Hotel Casino, where it recently opened, said the other night that they weren't quite certain why they were so eager to see the show. But there's something about the title Me and My Girl that rings a vague bell, they said. It sounds like a one-time hit that should not be missed. Well, a one-time hit it is. Me and My Girl made its debut on the London stage in 1937 and went on to become one of the longest-running musicals in the history of London theater.

They are two of the standard comedies of the modern British stage, equipped with star-studded casts designed to befit their eminence. But they have been trotted out for Broadway audiences in productions that don't do them justice. George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion comes off the better. It has Peter O'Toole as Prof. Henry Higgins, the phonetics expert; Amanda Plummer as Eliza Doolittle, whom Higgins takes as his pupil, and John Mills as her reprobate father. The production at the Plymouth Theater manages to be consistently entertaining without being very Shavian.

It's too bad that ABC is airing its new hour-long production of the Harold Pinter play The Dumb Waiter tonight (Ch. 6, 10 p.m.), when lots of people will be watching Hill Street Blues end its long and noble television career. One presumes that many of the adventurous viewers who have found Hill Street so satisfying might, under other circumstances, have taken a chance on ABC's brave, entertaining experiment. Everything about this Dumb Waiter is interesting. This two-man character study stars John Travolta and Tom Conti, an absurdist odd couple muttering Pinter's monosyllables with Cockney accents.

The final scene of the first act of My Fair Lady takes place in a London ballroom. That site alone makes the musical an appropriate production to launch the new Media Theatre for the Performing Arts. The 67-year-old movie theater in the Delaware County borough has been handsomely restored to its original elegant English Renaissance style. It has dark wooden walls, tasteful gilt accents, a sculpted plaster ceiling and a large crystal chandelier in the shape of a ball. If the dancers in scenic designer Gerry Gold's attractive grand ballroom set were able to twirl off the stage and into the aisles, they wouldn't look out of place.

Like Reservoir Dogs with a Cockney bark - but without Quentin Tarantino's filmmaking chops - the British entry 44 Inch Chest offers a tough-talking meditation on jealousy and marital betrayal. Its cast is stellar - Stephen Dillane, John Hurt, Ian McShane, Tom Wilkinson, and, at the center of it all, a broke-down bad man, Ray Winstone. But its script, from David Scinto and Louis Mellis, the cowriters of Sexy Beast , is nothing more than a heavy rotation of expletives and redundant riffing.

Guy Ritchie makes movies that zoom. The gangland Britspeak is pumped up, profane. The action flashes forward, then roars into reverse. All parties concerned appear to be having a gas - even as bullets fly, bad guys (and good) are beaten to a pulp, and suckers get taken for every cent. The problem with Ritchie - recently exed from a certain one-named pop diva - is that he keeps making the same movie. Like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels , Ritchie's RocknRolla is set in the London underworld.

The idea for Michael Ogborn's Caf? Puttanesca springs from a supposed custom of Italian prostitutes, who would gather together after a busy working night. Each is supposed to bring some leftovers to toss into a simmering pot for a late meal. Ogborn's show, which is set in a cafe in Amsterdam three years after the end of World War II, takes much the same approach, and the results aren't particularly appetizing. The period after the war, when so many lost souls scrambled to survive by any means possible, deserves more substantial exploration in fictional genres.

He was the top hair gun - on the cutting edge of hairstyling for women and (gasp!) men in the early '70s. The same ad man who coined the famous "Philadelphia isn't as bad as Philadelphians say it is" slogan literally made the haute-stylist's name: "Barry Leonard, Crimper. " What was a "crimper"? Who knew, but darling, everybody who was anybody was getting crimped! It was an era in which the hippest hairdressers were elevated to pop-culture icons (remember Warren Beatty in Shampoo?

Soon after I wrote an enthusiastic review of Sexy Beast, the letters, e-mail and phone calls began. But they weren't the usual protests of "Did we see the same movie?" Instead, the questions were "Did we hear the same movie?" and "Why didn't you say it needed subtitles?" Jonathan Glazer's brilliant directing debut is a black-humored, often brutal Brit gangster picture with a paint-peeling performance by Ben Kingsley - yes, Gandhi - as a psychopathic thug. And it's in English.

Despite F. Scott Fitzgerald's maxim, some lives are blessed with a rewarding second act, and that can be especially true for actors. Two of the more gratifying career comebacks of the '90s continue with the inspired pairing of Peter Fonda and Terence Stamp in The Limey. Steven Soderbergh, whose own up-and-down career righted itself triumphantly with last year's Out of Sight, exploits the richly contrasted styles and movie associations of Fonda and Stamp to the hilt. The result is that two performers who became screen icons in the '60s - and who have now reached the apt age of 60 - lift what is essentially a standard '90s revenge drama far above the routine.

There are flashbacks, and then there are flashbacks. In golden, olden days, rippling waves on the screen signaled a trip down Memory Lane, accompanied by spooky music and echo-chamber voice-overs going "I remember when. . . . " Now, maybe there's a polite dissolve, and some kid on the soundtrack reflecting about his coming-of-age. But in one of the most innovative applications of that hoary ol' narrative technique, Steven Soderbergh's The Limey deploys footage of its star, Terence Stamp, lifted from a 32-year-old film.

The downtrodden characters in Among Giants have the endless and messy task of climbing high above the Yorkshire countryside to paint electric transmission towers. As an unabashed attempt to reach the dizzying heights of the international smash hit The Fully Monty, the movie makes it halfway. If the setting (the gritty city of Sheffield) and the core of Among Giants, which features the camaraderie of an engaging bunch of down-on-their-luck guys, seem familiar, there's a very good explanation.

In Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw proposes that how one speaks determines one's place in society. Similarly, how the actors speak determines, to a large extent, the success of a production of the play. In Shaw's 1914 comedy, later adapted into My Fair Lady, a linguistics expert bets he can transform a common Cockney flower girl into a lady by teaching her to speak upper-class English. For the play to be convincing, the English accents, especially in the key roles of the linguist, Professor Henry Higgins, and the flower girl, Eliza Dolittle, must be spot-on.

America and Britain truly are two cultures "separated by a common language," as Winston Churchill once observed, but Jerry Seinfeld's explorations of British slanguage are a bit of a barney. In fact, the British slang has some U.S viewers tearing out their Barnett Fair. Here's a cheat sheet for the American Express commercials that open with Jerry before a London audience, bombing with the punchline: "So I got off the elevator, cut in line, and said, 'What is this, the seventh-inning stretch?