On Stage
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph T. Shipley The Season Keeps Improving THERE is no drought on Broadway; The Rainmaker1 has arrived. This picture of a rancher's family is homey and healthy as the spring soil,...
...At the Theater de Lys...
...In the best role of her swiftly rising career...
...they grow around the word "husband,' around the feel of little fingers at her knees...
...They have sent her off to cousins to come back married...
...and the song of the three "Ga-Ga Bores...
...But she does not wholly yield...
...Miss Page remains more of a sweet child than an actress, but the part and the girl grow together...
...After a murky start, indeed, the season has been brightening...
...He gives the younger brother, Jim, a black eye...
...Some of its humor springs from gags, but for the most part the laughs grow naturally out of the story, with humor that is thankfully above the comic-strip level...
...Noah, the elder brother who manages the ranch, remains a skeptic...
...The play is a documentary study, with a proper place in the building of the new season...
...but it conies closer to reality than most of what is offered as realism off Macdougal Street...
...At the Lyceum Theater...
...Here is as ingratiating a family as the stage has seen in some time...
...Adapted by Shimon Wincelberg...
...He it is that wakes plain Lizzie to dream, though she finds the basis of her dreams in her daily living...
...when Lizzie goes into the desperado's room at night, he is already stripped to the waist...
...she tells him...
...Part of the homely wisdom of homey folks, it wells up in a simple, tender drama...
...the rain comes, and happiness reigns at the ranchhouse...
...2 Reclining Figure...
...When Starbuck bursts in, with promise of rain to the drought-stricken land, Pop and Jim are caught by his fire...
...Dunces by Frank Wagner...
...Sentimental...
...This picture of a rancher's family is homey and healthy as the spring soil, with all its promise of rich harvest...
...Presented by Benjamin and Lawrence Rothman...
...Reclining Figure,2 an amusing piece about a masterpiece the artist didn't paint, is the season's first laugh hit...
...Don't mistake me...
...this is entertainment, not art...
...Romantic, it calls itself...
...More serious is the first play from Israel...
...I Feel Wonderful3 is a fresh and breezy "college" revue, on its own terms quite enjoyable...
...Directed by A be Burrows...
...He replies, "You can't live outside of them...
...Mike Wallace as the earnest young art dealer, Percy Waram as the happy but crotchety old millionaire, and Martin Gabel as the shrewd art dealer from the old country stand out among those who help Reclining Figure achieve three-dimensional fun...
...But Lizzie's dreams do not fly with impossible Melisande...
...Sands of the Negev4 no great shakes as a piece of dramaturgy but a genuine picture of the Jewish struggle against nature and hostile neighbors in the early days of building the new nation...
...1 The Rainmaker...
...then thunder and lightning announce the rainstorm...
...he puts on his shirt again instead of starting to take off his pants??and in that gesture the author relinquished the Picnic Pulitzer Prize...
...Presented by Martin Gabel and Henry M. Margolis...
...Lizzie, plain Lizzie, is the family problem...
...There's worry about the rain...
...Shipley s next column will be devoted to reticles of Peter Pan and Fanny...
...By Yigal Mottensohn...
...Geraldine Page makes the wistful yet understanding Lizzie a genuine figure...
...At the President Theater...
...The deputy sheriff wakes up in time...
...With pleasant youngsters dancing their way through, it has several freshly amusing skits, such as the 1960 cigarette ad, "Buy RolyPoly, you die more slowly...
...At the Cort Theater...
...By N. Richard Nash...
...Directed by Joseph Anthony...
...wise, plain Lizzie scoffs...
...And (contrary to the accepted notion along Broadway) it is not spoiled by being wholesome...
...she literally lets down her hair...
...She just comes back...
...Off Broadway, two of the new plays call for mention...
...There are rumors of the desperado...
...It does not sprawl, like many current plays, but its devices are old on the stage...
...the rainmaker admits he's a liar and a cheat...
...The wealthy Texas woman??a new gusher has just burst through her tennis court??buys Toulouse-Lautrec because she likes Jose Ferrer...
...By Harry Kurnits...
...Presented by Ethel Linder Reiner...
...Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman...
...he arrives and turns out to be a sort of bandit-hero...
...Then, in a weird mingling of tales in which Princess Melisande is the wife of Hamlet, Starbuck woos Lizzie out of her old-maid worries...
...Presented by Sidney S. Oshrin...
...Albert Salmi, as the lumbering younger brother, is also excellent as part of a well-chosen cast which, against a deftly-designed background for the deftly-written play, may well have a long sojourn at the Cort...
...3 I Feel Wonderful...
...You can relax pleasantly and at times agree with the title of the show...
...But there is a reserve in the play's movements...
...You can't always live inside your dreams...
...But there is gaiety in the theater as we watch Starbuck, "liar and con-man," a sweep-all-before-him, swashbuckling son of the cowlands, spouting a sort of poetry of the prairies...
...Sketches by Barry Alan Gael...
...4 Sands of the Negev...
...Pop and her two brothers go to the deputy sheriff to invite him to the house??object, matrimony...
...She sighs, "Well, maybe somewhere in between.' This sums up many lives...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 46
