The Wind in the Sassafras Trees at the Colonial through Saturday

IF YOU HAPPEN to be in the vicinity of the Colonial Theatre some night this week, you might want to drop by to catch one of the intermissions of The Wind in the Sassafras Trees. They begin at 9:27 and 10:03, and they are both hilarious.

The 9:27, unlike the 10:03, is low-key at first. Hundreds of theatregoers stream on to the sidewalks of Boylston Street, bleary-eyed and speechless. Soon they stop yawning long enough to engage each other in conversation. A bald, middle-aged man with spaghetti sauce stains on his wrinkled white shirt turns to his wife and says, "We spent $7.50 to see this thing, so we're going back inside, and we're going to stay until someone rapes the redhead."

Many onlookers paused to admire this gentleman's amazing sticktuitiveness as they scrambled for cabs. But scramble they did, leaving the audience's ranks considerably reduced for the 10:03 stanza.

The second intermission compensates for its lack of participants by integrating pathos into the comedy. Wives berate their spouses for forcing them to sit through another act of the sleepfest going on inside. One man asks those emerging from the balcony to ease his financial guilt and take his six seats in row five. He finds no takers, because everyone knows that snoring within earshot of the performers is rude.

These intermissions are a lot of fun. If producer David Merrick could figure out a way to produce them in place of the show they mercifully interrupt, he might have a hit here.

But in its present form, Sassafras can boast only a semi-humorous premise and an incredible two-hour anthology of stillborn gag lines.

The premise--British actors performing a campy American Western--ceases to be funny about thirty seconds into the first act. The feeble gags swarm around such familiar territories as the human anatomy, drunks, queers, and race (Authors Ray Galton and Alan Simpson even succumb to having a whiteman tell an Indian, "You all look alike to me.") As you might expect, the script is littered with countless unfunny versions of Western cliches (e.g., "Seldom have I heard so many discouraging words.")

The visual humor provided by director Burt Shevelove brings nothing to nothing. Characters dump water on each other's heads and slam rifle butts on their toes. One endless bit revolves around a prostitute stumbling around with an arrow stuck between her tits. It's that kind of show.

In the center of it all is an aimiable British comedian, Frankie Howerd, who plays a character named John Emery Rockefeller--conveniently giving the authors the opportunity to include a raft of Rockefeller jokes. (The play's being retitled Rockefeller and the Indians for its Broadway bow.) Mr. Howerd could probably be quite funny, if he were not hampered by such handicaps as the script and direction. Perhaps if Mr. Shevelove let his star run wild and ignore the play, Sassafras would draw more laughs than its present quota of one.

The rest of the cast is, well, from England. Hopefully they had the foresight to buy excursion-fare plane tickets, because, to use the play's own idiom, thar' ain't no gold in these here hills.