Maurice Evans and Menasha Skulnik
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph T. Shipley Maurice Evans and Menasha Skulnik Tenderloin. Book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman. Music by Jerry Bock. Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Dances and musical numbers...
...his repetition of a phrase in two tones that contradict one another...
...His tilt of the head...
...Similarly when the boy from the wrong side of the racetracks sacrifices himself to save the minister's reputation, he deserves the society girl who loves him...
...At the Ambassador Theatre...
...This old story of the stern father and the rebellious children takes new fun from its Jewish background, and helps make The 49th Cousin the hit of 49th Street...
...but he could hardly be expected to permit his daughter to marry one...
...And Papa Lowe sees the light of tolerance in his grandchild's eyes...
...Go up and see it sometime...
...his shifting, eloquent hands...
...Yet it is a Russian Jew who comes peddling his way into the Lowe kitchen, who gives Carrie a fruit fluter, and in exchange takes her heart...
...it is simply enough that he exhibits himself...
...The scenes of the brothel are hilarious...
...Then the police captain reminds him: "Sin is what keeps both you and me in business...
...Any self-respecting musical would give her to him...
...Presented by the Theatre Guild and George Kondolf...
...Even when the role is wrong...
...his way of delivering his words— these all bespeak the true comedian...
...Presented by Robert E. Griffith and Harold S. Prince...
...Directed by Jack Smight...
...Maurice Evans, as the preacher who wants to clean the Tenderloin district, cannot quite make us believe he's kidding...
...The 49th Cousin...
...However, Tracy kicks over the traces by marrying the Christian...
...Directed by Mr...
...By Florence Lowe and Caroline Francke...
...and if we take him seriously (either as pompous ass or devoted reformer)—the fun is gone...
...Its music is lively or mellow, its lyrics are as clever as I've heard in years...
...Seriousness is a gaping flaw in a musical comedy...
...his half-doleful, half-hopeful look...
...Ron Husmann is effective as the journalist who doubles both as entertainer in the brothel and as double-crosser, and Wynne Miller and Eileen Rodgers, good girl and bad respectively, add charm and gaiety...
...Perhaps the play grew tangled in the earnestness of the crusading novel...
...Yet something in the mood does not become the musical...
...Two scenes are peaks...
...There is something inherently funny in Menasha Skulnik...
...In The 49th Cousin, he is cast as a stern father who has kept his three daughters from marriage because no eligible young man was worthy of being his son-in-law...
...At the 46th Street Theatre...
...Menasha's manner, his small size that seems to shrink, his apparent expectation of a blow from fate, his not quite spick and span attire, fit him for the part of a Milquetoast— one who, of course, somehow finally does dare pick up life's challenge and come through...
...All this is a shame, for there are many delightful things in Tenderloin...
...No matter what you says or does, Things go on the way they was...
...Dances and musical numbers staged by Joe Layton...
...The words often bite home: Reform, reform Is only a passing storm...
...the girls in startling costumes are at once bawdy and conventional...
...Papa Lowe's synagogue has taken in one Russian Jew, to prove that it's not bigoted...
...Half a dozen songs will hum themselves in your memory...
...Poking fun at sin may keep a musical comedy in business, but Tenderloin tempers its fun with too-serious touches...
...he plays no varying parts...
...And as he tells his story, he is completely oblivious of the fact that she is taking off the Navaj o bathrobe he is wearing and putting on him his (brother's) formal pants, vest and coat, so that father Lowe will be ready to meet the man who ultimately marries the third Lowe girl...
...Its sets are simple but their range, from house of God to house of prostitution, gives scope for gaudy costumes and bawdy dialogue, and the girls—in society or for sale—are pretty and well choreographed...
...TENDERLOIN HAS ALL THE merry makings of a good musical...
...When the Gentile in the play, the principal of the school where Tracy Lowe teaches, chides Isaac for his narrowness, telling him "A Jew's a Jew," Isaac retorts: "Is a Christian a Christian...
...He has not exhibited a range...
...The first is that in which Menasha—who plays Isaac Lowe, a traveling peddler of spectacles, "almost a doctor"—takes out his letter chart and gives an eye-test to the young man who has come to ask permission to marry his daughter...
...To send him away without her at the end is, again, to take the whole thing too seriously...
...The second comes when the father, stubbornly refusing to see anyone, is coaxed by another daughter to reminisce...
...Ask the Pope...
...Just the same, it's the merriest romp in Old New York since Mae West...
...Just to see Maurice Evans playing leapfrog over three bedizened whores is worth the price of admission...
...A poor slum girl makes artificial flowers with wire and wax, but "wiring and waxing she waned...
...Evans can also sing...
...And it is lots of fun...
...The minister cries out against those who "denounce the sins of Babylon with passion, but skip the sins next door...
Vol. 43 • December 1960 • No. 47
