On Stage
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph T. Shipley Americana Without Dramatic Power Only in America. From the book by Harry Golden. By Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Directed and presented by Herman Shumlin. At...
...In earlier Americana, the authors have found wide dramatic issues...
...Presented by and at the Phoenix Theater...
...One can care little for such unrealized figures, or for their obvious story...
...Perhaps it is aimed at Hollywood, for the characters are already one-dimensional...
...But the fresh bawdry of the Greeks has here become leering pretense...
...Tobacco Road, Street Scene, Oklahoma, They Knew What They Wanted, Life with Father: The homey aspects of the land have flamed into the theatrical...
...The attempts at humor, including the few not aimed at sex, achieve the level usually scrawled on fences...
...These recent specimens are variously tawdry, vulgar or just plain dull...
...cuties and hags likewise, with large rubies at twin points above...
...such sex as is not shown is frequently implied, including homosexuality, sadism and incest...
...By Aristophanes...
...Both these plays use their main figure's real name...
...William Inge's contribution to current Americana may be a case history...
...By William Inge...
...The main action of La Guardia's opponents in the play, indeed, is to mingle "politics and poker," and to draw in a gangster to try to drop a baby-carriage full of paving-blocks from a rooftop onto our hero...
...They pretend to be out of the Aristophanes play which pictures the women on both sides of the Pelo-ponnesian War withholding their favors until the men cry "Peace...
...Americanized by Dudley Fitts...
...Directed by Mr...
...It is a near miss, unlike the play...
...No women—Presto Sexico!—no war...
...They are neither attractive nor for more than a moment amusing...
...Abbott...
...Any dissenting voice is clearly that of a Tammany ward-heeler, a man whose only reading is on a deck of cards...
...Fiorello...
...So, in truth, does the entire production, including the shabby talent dragged out of a burlesque house to the penthouse of a Tammany grafter...
...This ingratiating gentleman went south from New York, flying the banner of his faith in a journal he named The Carolina Israelite...
...At the Eugene O'Neill Theater...
...Fiorello, despite many faults, was probably an honest crusader...
...At the Cort Theater...
...the boy who has known her (in the Biblical sense) for a night goes off...
...La Guardia was much better entertainment than Fiorello...
...In his younger days, Golden had been sent to prison for financial misdealings...
...Dotards and athletes appear in pink skin-tights with green fig-leaves...
...The music is uninspired, the banal songs are poorly sung, the humor is leaden...
...Americana can be warm, nostalgic, earthy and at the same time infused with drama...
...The play moves on in adulation to Congress and World War Won, to final rapture as Fiorello accepts the Fusion nomination for Mayor...
...Of this, all that remains pertinent is the sex...
...AMERICANA HAVE been among our theater's landmarks...
...Americana sex—semi-demi-strip-tease, nudity on the New York stage being barred since La Guardia—is the proffering at the Phoenix...
...Nearest to effective theater is Only in America, which takes the title of Harry Golden's best-seller, but actually tells Golden's "success story...
...Presented by Saint Subber and Lester Osterman...
...the musical reverently almost makes him out a saint...
...Music by Jerry Bock...
...Lysistrata...
...Directed by Jean Gascon...
...Everyone knows that the spear and the sword are phallic symbols...
...At the close of the play, the tent-circus actress goes off to make pornographic pictures...
...As the curtain rises, the young lawyer's staff sings blissfully that they are "on the side of the angels...
...Book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott...
...Presented by Robert E. Griffith and Harold S. Prince...
...Its action centers a little below the abdomen...
...Now they linger affectionately over Golden's individual tale, skirting basic concerns, never making us feel they are showing something of significance that could happen "only in America...
...Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick...
...The audience also goes, wondering why it came...
...The Gang's All Here, the scandal of Teapot Dome...
...Inherit the Wind shows the Tennessee evolution trial...
...the play's climax is the public support he receives when the news does break...
...But four recent stage offerings have failed to achieve this fusion...
...Another piece of Americana, carved by veteran George Abbott and theatrical tyro Jerome Weidman, is the musical paean of praise for young Fiorello La Guardia...
...They add to the season's Americana, but little to its dramatic power...
...it emerges as a depressing drama of the Middle West in the 1933 depression...
...At the Broad-hurst Theater...
...A Loss of Roses...
...Tom Bosley, as "the Little Flower," looks a bit like him and speaks in piping tones, but completely lacks the dynamic quality of "the fiery young politician who galvanized New York...
...No self-respecting gangster—and one lingers to watch "the tomatoes"—would tolerate such a shoddy performance as these girls put on...
...Directed by Daniel Mann...
...As he prospers, his fear that this past may be revealed harasses him...
Vol. 42 • December 1959 • No. 47
