There was a hint of the unusual about Andy Kaufman's Carnegie Hall performance on Thursday even before he loaded the audience onto charter buses and took everyone out for milk and cookies. For one thing, the announced showtlme was 8:03 P.M. For another, there were guest appearances by the Rockettes and a largely black delegation from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And the overture for the show, which included “The Impossible Dream,” “Hound Dog” and the Popeye theme song, turned out to be a perfectly accurate indication of Mr. Kaufman's tastes and his repertory.

Mr. Kaufman, acting as a cross between variety‐show host and thriftshop proprietor, filled the stage with a parade of odd characters, the oddest of whom was, of course, Mr. Kaufman himself. Throughout the evening, an old woman in a reached‐colored dress saat in an armchair at the side of the stage, silently watching the show. Mr. Kaufman said that this was his Grandma. In fact, it was Robin Williams, the comedian, ingeniously disguised, but not altogether unrecognizable. The audience never questioned Mr. Kaufman's exptanation until Mr. Williams flipped off his white wig, which is perhaps some measure of the degree to which Mr. Kaufman, at his best, can flummox the viewer's, ability to distinguish between truth and fiction.

In fact, when Mr. Kaufman opened the show in the guise of Tony Clifton, a truly talentless nightclub singer who claimed to have written “Nothing Could Be Finer Than to Be in Carolina in the Morning” on a trip through Dixie, the masquerade was a resounding success. Next came the Love Family, a group of blond children performing a hilarious, tinkly medley of songs from “The Sound of Music” and “Hair,” waving their arms with such earnestness that they, too, were a perfect hybrid of sincerity and satire.

When Mr. Kaufman introduced a white‐bearded black man he claimed to have met when the man sang “Happy New Year” over and over again, on a street corner in Times Square, the audience was thoroughly bewildered yet also enthralled.