The Entertainment Quotient
BERMEL, ALBERT
ON STAGE By Albert Bermel The Entertainment Quotient ThOSE OUT-OF-TOWNERS-benefit parties from Oyster Bay and Westport, and liquored-up Seventh Avenue expense-account Mammons-for whom the New...
...Let me see you on your feet...
...What I liked most about Rumpelstiltskin is that Miss May does not make the usual concessions...
...Henry Burbridge, a winning RumpelstiItskin who can produce colored flags from the palm of his hand and spin straw into gold coins (I saw him do it), strolls off the three-quarter stage into the aisles from time to time to chat with the kids, hand out candy, and round up a protege...
...he asks a three-year-old...
...I want to take a look at you.' The child stands...
...And he is willing to perpetrate one of those smile-while-your- heart-is-breaking numbers...
...to play the Queen and the King...
...There is enthusiastic participation from the audience, who chip in unexpectedly, sometimes with devastating effect...
...Subsequently it sloughs off a great deal of Main Stem talk about Brotherhood and Suffering...
...He: "I don't believe in the here...
...Mark Sandrich Jr., who is responsible for it, is written up in Playbill as "one of three students accepted by Arnold Schoenberg, after submitting to the great American composer a concerto composed at the age of fifteen...
...Ben Franklin in Paris (Lunt-Fontanne Theater), What Makes Sammy Run (54th Street Theater), and Golden Boy, or What Makes Sammy Davis Do It...
...ON STAGE By Albert Bermel The Entertainment Quotient ThOSE OUT-OF-TOWNERS-benefit parties from Oyster Bay and Westport, and liquored-up Seventh Avenue expense-account Mammons-for whom the New York theater is said to be designed must be making rough weather of this season's selection of message musicals and plays with laborious social pleas...
...The dialogue rumbles with simile ("Your mind is all made up, like a roomette on the Pennsylvania") and null exchanges (She: "You don't believe in the hereafter...
...The entertainment quotient being what it is on Broadway, I suggest that you grab your child or kidnap a neighbor's for the afternoon and sneak into Rumpelstiltskin, which is playing twice on Saturdays and twice on Sundays until further notice at the Martinique on 32nd Street...
...The only other notable thing about this shopworn effort is the possibly unintended oxymoron formed by juxtaposing "poor" and "Rich" in the title...
...During these embarrassing moments, it's not easy to tell whether the author is spoofing his formula material or handling it badly because he is nervous about it-whether, that is, he has his tongue in his cheek or his heart in his mouth...
...Yet this is the sort of chance no actor is wise enough to tum down, Preston puts over every syllable of a number with grinding good humor...
...At one memorable moment Gordon draws his scruffy robe around him, straightens his crown and shakily instructs his consort and his son to "act royally...
...Franklin's mistress upbraids him thus: "For someone who was the Postmaster General of the United States you could have written...
...This is a children's show that is never -well, hardly ever-childish...
...But Michaels can also write a line in a lyric that runs, "If some day to have to share you with the moon I must " (Parse that one...
...I conclude that there is not much point in trying the respective box-offices unless you are thinking in terms of next July or thereabouts...
...He deserves her...
...William Hanley's Slow Dance on the Killing Ground (Plymouth) has brisk performances by Clarence Williams III and a vivacious girl named Carolan Daniels, a wavering Teutonic accent from George Rose, and a funny first act...
...I have a beautiful home...
...He tosses in a cute "prophecy speech" -Franklin wonders if future Americans will appreciate all the labor that went into making this an independent country, whether they will cherish the hard-won freedoms etc...
...You're good-looking but too tall...
...he has a couple of reliable aides in Jack Fletcher, a lugubrious comic, and Susan Watson, a stylish, pretty soubrette...
...Hello, Dolly!, Fiddler on the Roof, Funny Girl, and High Spirits are packing their houses and have yielded me no press tickets...
...Jean Kerr's Poor Richard (Helen Hayes Theater) has a suffocatingly sympathetic anti-hero who inflicts memory-twinges of Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan-but is better combed than the two of them put together-and ultimately gets his girl...
...Any single scene between these royal comedians is worth the $1.50 admission...
...And before the ascent of a balloon, the Spanish ambassador fearfully remarks "Who knows what clouds are like...
...It announces itself as being suitable for youngsters from four to 12...
...I'd be inclined to extend the upper limit indefinitely...
...Majestic), which I did sit through, sloggingly refute the notion that the musical has a right to call itself a contribution to American recreation (or art...
...Fifteen is an early age to start one's decline...
...The "legitimate" plays that have survived the hard winter are mostly bastard concoctions of old ingredients...
...Rooting around conscientiously for a little enjoyment, I haven't come upon one Broadway show likely to satisfy even an indulgent pleasure-seeker...
...The agonized, Tennessee Williamsish title should be warning enough...
...What the book and lyrics lack, the music does not make up for...
...Sorry...
...Would you like to come with me into the mountains...
...But if the director, Michael Kidd, and the producers have a clammy book and score on their hands, they had the sense to sucker Robert Preston into playing the singing, goutily capering, flirtatious, cynical, lovable, you-name-it, 70-year-old sage, who resembles the figure in say Carl Van Doren's biography about as finely as Elizabeth Taylor resembles Plutarch's portrait of Cleopatra...
...Sidney Michaels, author of the book and lyrics for Ben Franklin in Paris, can trot out a fairly good quip...
...But he gets precious little support from his leading lady, Ulla Sallert, whose "appearance before the producers, authors, and director concluded an extensive six-month search to find the right combination of Continental sophistication, feminine charm, and musical showmanship.' Miss Sallert is a colorless performer with a throaty tremolo...
...Elaine May who wrote and directed this frolic has recruited two actors from her production of The Third Ear, Renee Taylor and Mark Gordon...
...But the actors, schooled in the Second City brand of improvisation, encourage the interruptions and cunningly put them to the show's advantage...
...There may be pins up there...
...The child accepts a sweet, and nods...
Vol. 48 • February 1965 • No. 4
