On Stage:
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph T. Shipley Adaptations Go Far Afield IN THESE DAYS of adaptations, the prime rule for enjoying a work in its new medium is to forget what it was like originally. This is...
...hence, we see a scene in the dive where the ship's mate must be persuaded to take him, and the mate is shown a hot belly-dance as the come-on for the persuasion...
...From this point of view, with Mary (Peter Pan) Martin flying through and around and over it all, it is buoyant, mischievous, always lively and at moments even lovely...
...Most of these items might better have been thrown out...
...After each of them, Fanny has to be given a boost by the Pinza-Slezak combine...
...the films were seen here: Fanny, Marius, Marseilles...
...Peter Pan, as a mysterious veiled lady tempting the villain, dodges from pillar to post engagingly...
...Nana, the goodly canine Nurse of the Darling children, is followed by the grandly grotesque Lion, Kangaroo and Ostrich, who cavort in a stately yet persuasive dance that soon has the very trees moving about the stage in the rhythm...
...Presented by David Motrick and Joshua Logan...
...But Marius wants to go to sea...
...Cyril Ritchard, as the pirate Captain Hook, combines the manner of a coy eighteenth-century rakehell with the demeanor of an embarrassed Milquetoast??a combination that many will find irresistible...
...he goes...
...For Fanny,2 there is even greater need to forget both the plays and the movies, Pagnol's poignant trilogy...
...2 a Fanny, From the trilogy of Marcel Pagool...
...then he joins his brother and sister in sober flight to Never-Never Land...
...Pesigned by Peter Larkin...
...Fanny is a simple girl, but she has been wrapped in an over-elaborate production...
...Belter still is the amusing advice Fanny sings to her boy: "Be Kind to Your Parents...
...Cockles, Mussels"--Fresh, alive and blue...
...Perhaps it should be shown in continuous performance--first, because its mood is close to the generation that knows such a theater best (there'll surely be another movie...
...Young Michael kicks his legs, trying to walk on the air as he rises...
...Perhaps best is the harbor market song: "Oysters...
...He probably will...
...Only the crocodile with the clock endlessly ticking within his hide is not new-fangled...
...For example, there is the dignity of Ezio Pinza as old Papa Cesar, and the superb humor of Walter Slezak as Panisse, the wealthy sailmaker who marries the pregnant Fanny (and conveniently dies so that she may have her true love at the end...
...Marius is signed...
...And I set no age limit on that child...
...Costumon by Molloy...
...The production is lavish...
...bite them quick or they may start biting you...
...Especially with technical tricks, it multiplies the comparatively barren Barrie battery of device...
...This is especially true of Broadway's two new musical hits, Peter Pan and Fanny...
...Music and lyrica by Harold Rome...
...Meanwhile, Mary Martin sweeps in a spurt of joy across the great width of the Winter Garden--excuse me, the starry empyrean--swoops back to encourage the children, then--just in joy of the heavens and the spirit of flight--takes off again...
...It's too bad we cannot watch them at more worthwhile ventures...
...Tiger Lily and her tribe, Captain Hook and his crew are seen anew in the guise of TV buffoons...
...These two are a joy to watch...
...Choroogrnphy by Tamiria...
...There is a surge of dance, with interrupting vision, at Fanny's wedding to Panisse...
...The cartoon comics have taken over the pirates and Indians (if not quite the fairies) of yesteryear...
...Richard Halliday presents Edwin I.ester', prnduetion, At the Wintor Curdeu...
...and...
...Lyrics by Corolyn Loigh, Botty Comdon and Adolph Croon...
...At for flying, you haven't seen the like since Icarus grew proud...
...Usually, when a show throws in the kitchen sink it sinks, but there is so much in Fanny that some of it is bound to be good...
...More than one child at the first matinee, I am told, wanted to stay and see it all over again...
...Peter Pan,1 at the Winter Garden, reinterprets James M. Barrie's nostalgic dream of childhood as a youngster of today might picture it on television...
...From the atory by James M. Barrie...
...Tinker Bell, the fairy discernible only as a twinkling of light, goes through antics that one might expect of a spirit table-tapper in mischievous mood...
...This production is not what the London children savor when Barrie's Peter Pan is performed there every Christmas season, but it's a supercolossal comics frolic for the American child's delight...
...Florence Henderson, too, is effective, appearing as Fanny, the wistful girl of the Marseilles waterfront...
...at the baby's fifth birthday, a whole circus, with living statues, is thrown in...
...secondly, because only in that way could the theater begin to accommodate the crowds that want to see it...
...Music by Murk Charlap...
...Diroeted by Jerome Robbins...
...Mother," said one seven-year-old boy after that matinee, "when I have children, I'm going to take them to see this show...
...1 Peter Pan...
...Directed by Joshua Logan...
...At the Majoatic Theator...
...hence, there is an underwater ballet of Fanny's forlorn dream...
...Slezak and Pinza keep out of most of the messes...
...Sota by Jo Miolziner...
...By S. N. Beheman and Jonhan Lognn...
...The music is generous and generally good, the best love song moving in an unusual direction: "To My Wife...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 48
