On Stage
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE New Season Opens With a Boom By Joseph T. Shipley The Sadler's Wells Ballet. From the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Presented by S. Hurok. At the Metropolitan Opera House. Catch a...
...This offers simple, unsophisticated, but frequently fresh entertainment...
...David Burns is given too little to do...
...The Brattle Shakespeare Players in Henry IV Part One...
...The Sadler's Wells Ballet at the Metropolitan has a little longer stay...
...Lyrics by Paul Webster and Ray Golden...
...Marceau is a genuine artist in a small but lovely field...
...Some are swift seasonals...
...The gliding Ice-Capades of '56 have already given way to the galloping Rodeo...
...Comic or poignant, multiform--even in his announcement placards achieving beauty--M...
...Sketches by Danny and Neil Simon...
...The usual spate of August announcements has been followed by more than the usual number of September openings...
...Presented by Sy Kleinman...
...The demonstrations of style were surpassing, as his lithe body and mobile countenance carried us right into his feelings, while he walked against the wind, or climbed up and down imaginary stairs, or set up his easel to paint, or tried to skate--or was within half as many minutes a dozen different persons in a park...
...At the other extreme, the solo work of Marcel Marceau, "BIP" the mime, gives shining example of individual artistry...
...His is the first salvo in the return to our Salute to France--already followed by our old friend Maurice Chevalier, with the Comedie Franchise packing trunks for a late October visit...
...Similarly, the Calypso carnival divorce court number is more entertaining to those without memories of Gilbert's Trial by Jury...
...Music by Sammy Fain and Phil Charig...
...Catch a Star...
...With Margot Fonteyn at her beautiful best, with Beryl Grey returning in winning grace, this group continues to make strong claim to being the world's best ballet company...
...It is as though the birds were displaying their plumage before setting off for winter quarters...
...Marcel Marceau in an Evening of Pantomime...
...but there are enough spirit and gaiety to make the revue a welcome foretaste of the unusually large number of musicals the season holds for us...
...before our eyes...
...Some of these are renewals or replacements: the return of Anastasia and Victor Borge, the success of Melvyn Douglas as Paul Muni's successor in Inherit the Wind...
...There flashed to mind the condensed motion picture of a flower, within a minute welling from bud through blossom and full flower to over-blowth and the petals' fall...
...Best of these is Trude Adams, who sings To Be or Not to Be in Love and other songs with an ingratiating personal touch...
...The individual numbers are less happy, on the whole, than the group spirit...
...The stir of Falstaff and his fellows, the rouse of the court and the camp--the farce and the force in the feudal divisions then fusing to form a single people--gain power and dignity through the intelligent and cooperating zeal of this troupe...
...Pat Carroll doesn't glean much fun from the proceedings...
...Down at the Phoenix Theater, T. Edward Hambleton and Norris Houghton are giving largesse to lovers of the theater by bringing the French pantomime artist Marcel Marceau here for a fortnight...
...Most vivid of his numbers was the surprising act where through some 90 seconds we watched him change from youth to age, fading out a lifetime, drooping to die...
...but we were delighted with his series of samples...
...Presented by T. Edward Hambleton and Norris Houghton for and at the Phoenix Theater...
...Presented by Jean Dalrymple for and at the New York City Center...
...Directed by Jerome Kilty...
...Carmen Amaya ushers in October with her brief but colorful appearance...
...Particularly in the history chronicle play, the old spirit is recaptured...
...The skit "Arty," a travesty of the motion picture Marty, has amusing moments, especially for those who haven't seen the film...
...The Brattle Players are in their final days at the City Center...
...At the Plymouth Theater...
...We should have liked to see him in a mime drama, with a company presenting a full play...
...Many of its starlets have come from the training-ground of Camp Tamiment, some by way of the once-Tamiment now TV director Max Liebman...
...The earliest of the newcomers "come to stay" is the light and easygoing revue Catch a Star...
...This season has begun with a boom...
...The D'Oyly Carte Company has begun its Gilbert and Sullivan season...
...Also a sample of group spirit is the work of the Brattle Players, in Othello and Part One of Henry IV Without stars, this Cambridge group establishes an authentic mood...
...Supervised by Ray Golden...
Vol. 38 • October 1955 • No. 39
