On Stage:
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph ? Shipley The Star-Not the PlayIs the Thing on Broadway The Conquering Hero.Book by Larry Gelbart, from a story by Preston Sturges. Music by Moose Charlap. Lyrics by...
...Finally, Carol Channing with the French quartet tells the story of Marie, who captures Paris not with her coquetry but with her cuisine: "Highly "impressed with her breast of veal With lamb and ham and goose her oven is always in use...
...At the O'Neill Theatre...
...And she gives us good fare...
...All the other new musicals have frankly returned to the older pattern of noise and stir, to a scatter-brained rush of rather disconnected and rather silly "numbers" centered upon a star...
...She also does well in a gory article called "Switchblade Bess...
...Staged by Dorothy Raedler...
...The star, Tom Poston, cannot counterbalance the inane vulgarity of the evening...
...Eureka Presents," capturing major impresario S. Hurok...
...At the City Center...
...Since these shows depend upon the star, what is more natural than to eliminate the noisy trimmings and give us the luminary alone...
...Why then are we impatient at a bad season...
...Others in the bright mood are Brigadoon, Finian's Rainbow, South Pacific, Kiss Me, Kate...
...In Preston Sturges' story, Woodrow Truesmith, discharged from the Army for hay fever, is brought home to mother by a group of marines who pass him off as a hero...
...and in a series contrasting the old sentimental musicals ("In Our Teeny Little Weeny Nest For Two") with the modern murky ones ("This Is a Darned Fine Funeral...
...The star's the thing...
...Yet in spite of lavish expenditure and care, this one—Camelot—shows a decided thinning of the vein...
...As a performer Carol Channing has matured...
...Starting with Oklahoma and culminating in My Fair Lady (still on Broadway), they found a formula of borrowing from another form—both were fashioned from plays—and establishing a fresh pattern...
...of Marlene Dietrich, revealing that Carol is physically endowed as well...
...Music, lyrics and sketches by Charles Gaynor...
...Presented and conducted by Julius Rudel...
...The American theater, not long ago, gave birth to a galaxy of great musicals...
...Only one of the new musicals this season seems to have followed this pattern of tasteful growth from another work...
...She brings along one good comic, Jules Munshin, and a background quartet, the neatly styled French singers, Les Quat' Jeudis...
...Additional sketches by Ernest Chambers...
...Between Sophocles and Shakespeare there rolled 2,000 years...
...He is elected mayor of his home town...
...Lyrics by Normal Gimbel...
...Two other numbers stand out...
...His last-minute confession does not wipe out the bad taste and comic strip level of the childish war scene, the infantile travesty of patriotism, mother-love and religion—and a lot of noise...
...Those that want more than a star will hurry for a seat at the City Center, where four Gilbert and Sullivan masterpieces are in full swing: The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, Pinafore, The Gondoliers...
...Then, as suddenly as it had freshened, the borrowing formula somehow seemed to grow stale...
...Here are the most delightful musicals since Aristophanes rocked Athens with laughter back in the 5th century B. C...
...One advertisement quotes a critic's "praise": "Silly fun, loud fun, fast fun, old-fashioned fun...
...The brash and brassy musical reaches the season's low point in The Conquering Hero, in which the hero is a heel...
...Closed...
...She builds disarming ease and quiet grace into strong appeal...
...of Lynn Fontanne (with Munshin as Alfred Lunt) getting ready for the Monday cleaning of the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre...
...But they depend upon what the Times' critic calls "the personal gifts of the chief performers": Tammy Grimes, Maurice Evans, Lucille Ball...
...Gilbert and Sullivan Repertory...
...Presented by Robert Whitehead and Roger L. Stephens...
...Feast on the double entente...
...She is at her best in her deft burlesques of Sophie Tucker...
...Substituting good taste for noise and cleverness for corn, Carol Channing in Show Girl shows us that a girl can be a show...
...It was not an original formula, but it was vitalized by a surging spirit and a gay collaboration that made the musical the finest expression of our recent theater...
...At the ANTA Theatre...
...Jules Munshin has a superb travesty, "S...
...This modestly labeled "small revue" provides a big time on Broadway...
...Show Girl...
...Presented by Oliver Smith, James A. Doolittle and Charles Lowe...
...Not even the Play-of-the-Month Club advertises a masterpiece a month...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 5
