On Stage:
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph T. Shipley A Surge of Spring Openings Henry IV, Part Two. By William Shakespeare. Directed by Stuart Vaughan. Presented by and at the Phoenix Theater. A Second Siring. By...
...Jean Pierre Aumont is not convincing either as a great playwright or as a great lover...
...At the Helen Hayes Theater...
...Presented by Carroll and Harris Masterson...
...Hermione Gingold's From A to Z is not literally all of one quality, but it is an enlivening alphabet of fun...
...The Birdie is Birdie Gordon, the teenagers' joy, who goes to the town of Sweet Apple to kiss goodbye the lucky lass chosen by lot for his embrace, before he leaves for the Army...
...At the Plymouth Theater...
...Paola, wife of the town's new justice, in 1868 in Aix, is one of what Burns calls the unco' guid, the uncomfortably virtuous...
...Bye Bye Birdie may stress the first words...
...It sustains Giraudoux's reputation as the contemporary French playwright to whom Broadway is most receptive...
...From A to Z. A musical by many hands, with Hermione Gingold...
...When I read this battle of Vice and Virtue—rather, of human frailty and prudish purity—I thought it over-talky and abstract...
...In one, the girl imagines how she would kill her roving lover: firing squad, guillotine—with a bow to Dickens—common rope and knife...
...The screaming and swooning of Elvis Presley fans may concern the parent and sociologist, but hardly makes an amusing musical...
...Presented by Edward Padula...
...Too late she finds she is still "pure": "What a disaster to lie down a martyr and rise a virgin...
...At the Eugene O'Neill Theater...
...Rather cockily she begins by singing of many sorts of gold, concluding: "Thick gold and thin gold, the best gold is—Gingold...
...The play has two effective dance numbers...
...In the other, she seeks forgetfulness by invading a meeting of the local Shriners, which she mistakes for, and turns into, a wild stag party...
...This is in the good tradition, now almost forgotten, of the Weber and Field travesties, when, for an example, Clyde Fitch's hit The Stubbornness of Geraldine was immediately followed by The Stickiness of Gelatine—and the burlesque often outlasted the original...
...Nor is Chita Rivera, the lively dancer of West Side Story, enough of a singer and personality to carry an evening...
...Vivien Leigh, Mary Ure, Ludi Claire and their company make the characters live and give a not wholly consistent but tense drive to the story...
...Henry IV, Part Two, in repertory with Part One, makes the present offering one of the Phoenix' best...
...Hermione Gingold ranges through the whole alphabet with more success...
...By Lucienne Hill, from a novel by Colette...
...Adapted by Christopher Fry...
...Music by Charles Strouse...
...Her mobile face helps make her a merry mimic and a truly funny comedienne...
...A good cast, on the other hand, gives spirit and life to the Jean Giraudoux-Christopher Fry parable...
...Shakespeare's canvas is broad and vivid...
...But two dances do not make a musical...
...A good cast can do little with the outdated pattern of A Second String, Colette's second chance on Broadway this season...
...Duel of Angels is given a stately, stylized production by Robert Helpmann in his first directing assignment...
...Lyrics by Lee Adams...
...The comedy is engaging: Eric Berry as Falstaff, Gerry Jedd as a quaintly tender Dame Quickly...
...Outstanding is the scene where the dying King Henry (Fritz Weaver) begins to understand his son, Prince Hal (Edwin Sherin), after the Prince has tried on the crown: "O polished perturbation...
...By refusing to speak even to the husband of a woman she thinks unfaithful, Paola precipitates a town tragedy, which recoils upon her...
...She has wisely gathered a group of gay and graceful young folk, who are funny or charming in skits and monologues, and in dances—from the old "time step" with high hat and black cane to ballet and an uproarious burlesque of the Russian folk dancers recently in our land...
...Presented by Roger L. Stevens and S. Hurok...
...Patricia Falkenhain as a robustious Doll Tearsheet and John Heffernan a find as the senile Shallow...
...At the Martin Beck Theater...
...Presented by Leonard Sillman and Carroll and Harris Masterson...
...Directed by Robert Helpmann...
...golden care...
...Duel of Angels...
...The bitter wife arranges a trap and the drugged Paola thinks she has been ravished...
...A SURGE OF spring openings enforces brevity...
...Pour Lucrece, by Jean Giraudoux...
...Like the Roman Lucrece, Paola dies to vindicate Virtue...
...Duel of Angels...
...That his wife and his secretary-mistress agree to share him, in the moments he spares from younger amours, may satisfy them, but hardly rouses the audience...
...Bye Bye Birdie...
...Book by Michael Stewart...
...High point of the evening is the lengthier burlesque of The Sound of Music in The Sound of Schmaltz, with Miss Gingold superbly gauche as Mary Martin taming the Klaptrap family of singers...
...Directed by Gower Champion...
...Directed by Raymond Gerome...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 19
