Theatre Guild's Animated Hit Parade of USA
Theatre Guild's Animated Hit Parade of USA AMERICA IN S0NG By JOSEPH T. SHIPLEY "SING OUT, SWEET LASD!" A Salute to American Folk and Popular Uueic. By Walter Kerr. Mimic arranged and...
...Parson Killjoy puts Barnaby Goodchild in the stocks for singing (not Psalms...
...Which they do all evening, ]*| by Barnaby...
...Mimic arranged and conducted by Elie Siegmeitter...
...Barnaby accepts the curse as a mission: like a Wandering Jew's Harp, he sings to unite the people...
...But we're lota of time, and ws'r*itarted well...
...Walter Kerr come* up from Washington with a trunk full of folk song...
...The singers are effective...
...the dancers, animated—but the choreography ia no more profound than the action, which is of legend simplicity, when not silly...
...Here is the Americana play to end all stage Americana...
...There is little freshness or fun, for example, in burlesquing the often burlesqued "Frankie and Johnny," of the equally familiar "Casey Jones...
...There's a pretense of a story to hitch the111 to...
...At th* International Theatre...
...on the Sabbath...
...So well keep going along, And well keep singing a song...
...It'* hardly a play...
...Preatnted by the Theatre Guild...
...then condemns him to go singing forever...
...Dane** directed by Dorie Humphrey and Ckarlet Weidenan...
...It's too bad there ar* no Negro dancers to match their singing mood, Th* new American* sing, in 1784: Where we're going would be hard to tell...
...Borrowing Alfred Drake from "Oklahoma" and burly Burl Ives from hillbilly hunting, the Theatre Guild has rolled back the legendary growth of our country, snd here presents America in song...
...Some of the leu familiar songs are more welcome...
...And, with dramatized accompaniments that range from weeping mountain lions and amorous Indian maids to the black-mustachio'd villsin from whom "Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl," we hearken to the songs...
...if* a pageant of American song, sentimental, Under, aad or gay: at animatsd Hit Pared* of the U.S.A...
...and Ives does a good job wit* "Rock Candy Mountain...
Vol. 28 • January 1945 • No. 1
