Chachacha, And All That

...The play cheats even more in its handling of adultery...

...The aridity of Bennett's physical imagination, as it were, is equally evident in his direction...

...Right, a.k.a...

...But he never manages to choreograph—to marshal movement in the service of visual harmony the way a mathematician marshals little Greek letters in the service of an elegant proof...

...his sole companion is his servant of 50 years, Hawkins (George Rose...

...Fifty per cent of one man," she sings toward the end in one of Alan and Marilyn Bergman's ludicrous tunes, "is better than 100 per cent of none at all...

...William Douglas Home's play features a wildly successful author (Rex Harrison), getting on in years, who lives in a mansion in the English countryside...

...His bitchy duet with George Rose is a marvel of comic timing, and the butler's basset face remains at once prim and annoyed under the withering barrage of Cecil's insults...

...a change of heart, a disas-sociation from her stultifying past...

...it is generally content to beat about the bush until some innuendos about old age and sex are uncovered...

...The sets are the work of Robin Wagner...

...I am not troubled by a play whose ending is apparent from the very beginning: The joys of A Midsummer Night's Dream are not marred by our knowledge that Lysander will have his Hermia and Demetrius his Helena...

...Behaving like the boun-dering youth he presumably remains at heart, he alludes coyly to his undiminished sexual prowess and tries to stoke Evelyn's ardor by getting her drunk and by reminiscing about their grand passion—a passion ignited on the very grounds where Sir Cecil's house now stands...

...Al Rossi (Vincent Gardenia), a mailman...

...The sport for the evening is whether Sir Cecil will be able to talk her into marrying him...

...Alas, Harrison and Rose provide the only comedy...

...Or, in fact, how she feels about sharing her husband at all: To her, 50 per cent might seem like a raw deal...

...This impression is aggravated by Claudette Colbert...

...One could go to the Rainbow Grill—where there is no choreographer on the premises and see more precisely executed rhumbas, fox trots and waltzes...

...In what can only be described as a magical transformation that bypasses the usual processes of human development, she has merely to step in the ballroom—a garish, blood-red affair and presto...

...There is a great deal of pleasure to be had here from Rex Harrison's performance...

...Her attempts to sound young and sexy—and at the same time mature, a survivor—failed in a way that I, for one, found sad...

...The second problem is that Ballroom is dishonest—with its characters and its audience...

...Jerome Kass' story concerns Bea Asher (Dorothy Loudon, at her best), a middle-aged widow who has been living off the memory of her husband, as well as off his possessions: She sells his old things and hers in a "junk" store that she operates...

...And the blocking could have been the work of a second-rate football coach, so difficult is it to keep our attention focused where it should be...

...The performers seldom talk to each other...

...He pushes his dancers this way and that, speeds them up, slows them down, gives them little terpsichorean bits the better to individuate them...

...we begin to believe, after a while, that Cecil and Evelyn really are old and should be off doing something more sensible with their time...

...For Bennett himself expends most of his energy in a frantic attempt to create a spectacle, a theatrical high, by means of bright multi-colored lighting sprayed, as if by a machine gun, throughout the theater, and a lot of very busy albeit unexciting hoofing...

...they seem, rather, to declaim to the air, like mountaineers on separate peaks...

...Rossi's wife exists simply to provide the illusion of dramatic conflict—to give Bea another obstacle to contend with so that the audience won't get bored...

...A friend convinces her to try the ballroom, where people of varying ages (but mostly middle) come, as in Saturday Night Fever, to be reborn in those glorious moments on the Dance floor...

...He thrusts, she parries, and so it goes—their romantic duel interrupted only by Hawkins, who is jealous of, and resents, the female intruderuntil the inevitable happy ending...

...it would spoil everyone's fun (see the penultimate scene in Les En/ants du Para-dis)and we are left to wonder how she feels about cleaning up the house while Big Al cha cha chas in the mirror-studded neon world of the Ballroom...

...Home's text seldom gets off a good shot...

...On the other hand, there is no point in complaining about such matters...

...But as a result of the illegible short-hand in which she has been sketched, we can never enter the action...

...She's not getting ripped off, though: 50 per cent of the chubby Gardenia is a lot to settle for...

...Thus, even on the surface—the sine qua non of Broadway shows—Ballroom is ugly...

...Harrison has some particularly endearing moments, such as his imitation, delivered off-handed-ly, of Napoleon playing golf...

...What, you may ask, is so dishonest about that...

...The passion between these two old lovers is, furthermore, all too vaguely suggested...

...Rossi never appears—naturally...

...Wodehouse character who has aged interestinglyand one would expect no less from the world's finest actor of light comedy...

...Tharon Musser is responsible for the goofy lighting...

...They fall in love, but their romance—which progresses nightly, in snatches between Bennett's dance numbers—runs into opposition from her family...

...Well, to begin with, we never see Bea growing into a new life...

...By contrast The Kingfisher is relatively pleasant, but in absolute terms, despite the festive advance notices from Londonit is disappointing...

...Bennett, the man responsible for that indescribably mawkish, self-serving paean to the inner world of the actor, Chorus Line, is to choreography what Augustus Johns is to portraiture: a lionized hack...

...The rather lonely sweep of Sir Cecil's present life is broken when Evelyn (Clau-dette Colbert) his old sweetheart, the great love of his life, comes to pay a call just after the death of her not very beloved husband, Reginald...

...His Cecil is charming, crotchety, confused, sly, and slightly wickeda P.G...

...After meeting the wonderfully wacky regulars, Bea finally runs into Mr...

...Like a true '60s heroine, however, Bea is determined to live her life, to grab for all the gusto she can, no matter whatno matter even that Al Rossi is already married...