SHIFT IN STAGE FASHIONS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30559, 30 September 1964, Page 9

SHIFT IN STAGE FASHIONS

[By George Oppenheimer, in the "Financial Times." Reprinted by arrangement I Within past years certain types of entertainment have disappeared almost completely from the American stage. In London, where I have recently spent the better part of a month and can therefore speak with unassailable authority on all things British, some of these forms still persist, but not in anything like the.numbers that they once marshalled. Where, tor instance, are the operettas? (I . exempt occasional revivals such as “The • Merry Widow,” which is about 1 to be unveiled at the Music • Theatre of Lincoln Centre 1 with Patrice Munsell in the ' role of the roistering relic.) ' There have been a few at--1 tempts to satirise it—“ Little ! Mary Sunshine” and “The ■ Student Gypsy” are examples : —but, for my taste, they were pallid parodies of the ‘ originals. Cumbersome It is true that the librettos of these light operas were, for the . most part, cumbersome crammed to the catwalks with mistaken identities, requited and unrequited loves, masquerades where husbands failed to recognise their diaphanously veiled wives, ladies who had been switched in their cradles by playful gypsies and other ingredients from the larder of W. S. Gilbert. However, where the latter took his material at face value, his successors treated it reverentially and anointed it with cliches. Nevertheless, operetta lasted for many years, not, ' I believe, so much because our forebears were more undemanding and credulous, but because of the music by Oscar Strauss, Franz Lehar, Sigmund Romberg, Kalmann, Victor

Herbert and company. 1 regret the passing of these melodic days, but I cannot bewail the death and the dearth of operetta. There has come to replace it plays with music that is integrated into the plot, an accessory and an aid to it. Rodgers and Kammerstein made the major contributions to these musicals with “Oklahoma,” Carousel,” “South Pacific” and “The King and I” (which has had a great success in its recent revival at Lincoln Centre). “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” “My Fair Lady,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” “Guys and Dolls,” “How to Succeed”—all these are worth a library of operettas. Double Beds

Then there are the farces which once upon a time delighted American audiences with their double beds and entendres, their not very adult adulteries and their promises of promiscuity. How naive and innocent they seem now. In those days characters were often found under beds. Now they have moved up and on. The four-poster has, in fact, given way to the fourletter word and the sex habits of the sexes have become strangely mixed and indiscriminate. On occasion a farce returns to dur stage under an assumed name. It is called “a comedy” or sometimes just “a play.” “Twin Bed,” "Getting Gertie’s Garter,” “Up in Mabel’s Room” and others of that ilk would now seem guileless romps in which the participants seldom ventured below the bolster and inhibitions were observed without lasting traumas or neuroses. The greatest change in all these diminishing entertainments has come in the musical revue. There was a day—a happy day—when the revue flourished. There were the lavish musical annuals—Ziegfield’s Follies, George White’s Scandals, Earl Carroll’s Vanities, sops for the tired business man and his richly attired wife or less legal companion. Maybe automation has made them less tired and so

less eager to be lulled into enjoyment rather than galvanised into thought. Decorative Beauties At all events these earlier entertainments were adorned by some of the greatest beauties of our time—Justine Johnstone, Lillian Lorraine, Marilyn Miller, Kay Laurel. Marion Davies, Ina Claire (once one of the most decorative of Ziegfield ladies) —and brightened by such comedians as W. C. Fields, Fanny Brice, Ed Wynn, Bert Williams, Willie and Eugene Howard, Ray and Johnny Dooley, Leon Errol, Tom Patricola (sometime with as many as four or five of them in one review). Then came the intimate revues—“ The Garrick Gaieties,” “The Little Shows,” “Chariot’s Revue,” “The Music Box Revues,” “As Thousands Cheer,” “Pins and Needles” (a forerunner of the socialconscious musical of today),

“Flying Colour,” “Three’s a Crowd,” “The Band Wagon” (to me the best of them)— witty, tuneful and enchanting. Once in a long while a producer, more doughty than wise,' tries a musical revue of this type, but I cannot re-

call a successful or a worthy one in the last decade. Instead there are the topical improvisational, political revues with the musjc entirely eliminated or secondary to the sketches. Some of these are produced at hotels and night clubs, others like “The Premise,” “The Establishment” and “The Second City” are housed in theatres off Broadway. They seldom have casts of more than six and are practically denuded of scenery and bereft of costumes. The best, “Beyond the Fringe,” has just concluded a long and profitable Broadway run and unhappily, encouraged lesser talents to essay imitations that died aborning. One-Star Shows Then, too, there are the one-star shows, really vaudeville built around an outstanding personality like Danny Kaye, Judy Garland, Jack Benny, Maurice Chevalier, Yves Montand, with trained dogs or seals or acrobats filling in while the stars catch their breaths and change their clothes. But the musical revue, as it once was, has almost gone and I mourn its passing, brought on by television spectaculars and economic factors. . Finally, where are the mystery plays? They continue in England but not here. The day of the sliding, panel, the gloomy manor house, the omniscient detective (whose arrival on the scene automatically added to the number of corpses), the hysterical comedy maid, the screams in the night, is gone. . They brought “The Mouse-trap” to this country, but it lasted only a few weeks in an off-Broad-way theatre. Only Frederick Knott with “Dial M for Murder” and, to a lesser degree, “Write Me a Murder,” has made money and goose-flesh. No Butlers Maybe existing social conditions have eliminated the mystery play. Living has become such that the butler is now almost extinct. How then can you pin a murder on the butler if there is none on the premises or in the cast? Television has partially solved the problem. On it mysteries . abound, not the least of which is how so many of them can be so inept Shed a tear for the operetta, the farce, the revue and the mystery, hut not too large a one. Other, forms have come to take their place. The musical plays have replaced the operetta; the farce is still with us under an assumed name; revues have turned topical; and if you crave mystery, try to unravel the plots of the practitioners of the Theatre of the Absurd.