New Play in Manhattan

A Highland Fling (by Margaret Curtis; produced by George Abbott) is as Scottish as it sounds but hardly as lively. A yarn about the ghost of a rakish 18th-Century laird, it tries for both rowdy fun and romantic charm, never quite spears either.

Too much of a highflier on earth to have got his wings in Heaven, Charlie MacKenzie (Ralph Forbes) has spectrally hugged his old haunts for 150 years. At the moment he is pleasantly taken up with an appealing village "daftie" (Playwright Curtis) -- only children and dafties, of course, can communicate with ghosts. From his angel wife Charlie learns that he can still crash the pearly gates if he reforms a living sinner. He pitches on the neighborhood's lustiest devotee of Scotch, women and dice, and their efforts to outsmart each other provide the brightest moments in the play. In the course of it all Charlie outsmarts himself; no Heavenly fling, he discovers, can equal a good old Highland fling.

A nice fantasy idea, handled with a nice sense for prankish complications, A Highland Fling just isn't written with enough gusto or grace. Its romantic moods never quite blend Scotland with fairyland; the thistle is there, but not the thistledown. And its fun is too often tame and even cute -- a sort of A. A. Milne version of Tam O'Shanter.

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