New Musicals in Manhattan

Sing Out, Sweet Land! (book by Walter Kerr; produced by the Theater Guild) is a songbook history of American life. Combining folk music with Tin Pan Alley tunes, it warbles its way across the centuries--the voice of a canoeman floating down the Ohio, a chorus raised in an Illinois clearing, a medley of tunes on a Mississippi steamboat, a soldiers' rouse round a Civil War campfire, the guttural throb of Negro blues, the frilly ditties of the Gay Nineties, the brash rhythms of speakeasy jazz.

In the long procession troop Susannah, Frankie & Johnnie, Captain Jinks, Casey Jones, Daisy with her answer true. And easy, engaging Ballad Singer Burl Ives throws in his own specialties--Foggy, Foggy Dew, Blue Tail Fly, and that luscious glimpse of Hobo Heaven, Rock Candy Mountain:

Oh, the buzzing of the bees

In the cigaret trees

By the soda-water fountain;

Near the Lemonade springs

Where the bluebird sings

In the big rock-candy mountain . . .

With such a wealth of engaging material; Sing Out, Sweet Land! had a golden opportunity that it largely muffs. For its music fails to vibrate, to express dramatically or even evoke nostalgically the picturesque American life it was part of. Instead of trying to get as close to history as it can in the way of frontier lustiness, sectional color and period sentiment, Sing Out, Sweet Land! burlesques a good deal of the past, and emasculates a good deal more.

The dancing is commonplace, the book childish; and the central character (Alfred Drake, late of Oklahoma!), a happy-go-lucky figure condemned in Puritan times to wander the roads from generation to generation, lacks the tang and sinew of a Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyan. What should have been an exciting show remains, at best, a pleasant song recital.

On the Town (book and lyrics by Betty Comden & Adolph Green; music by Leonard Bernstein; produced by Oliver Smith & Paul Feigay) is a youthful high dive that hits the water with a terrific splash. Spoil-sports may find fault with its diving form and point out that it comes up looking wet behind the ears; but if sheer enjoyment is not an outmoded measuring stick, On the Town is one of the freshest, liveliest, most engaging musicals in many years. Its fund of humor, flashes of satire and scorn for formulas make it better adult entertainment than many, if not most, less youthful shows.

On the Town is an enlargement in color of the sock ballet, Fancy Free (TIME, May 22) that Choreographer Jerome Robbins and Composer-Conductor Leonard Bernstein did for the Ballet Theater. Here again are three young sailors footloose in Manhattan, only now one of them falls for the photograph of Miss Turnstiles, the subway's girl-of-the-month (Sono Osato), and the search for her becomes a breathless, round-the-town, round-the-clock jamboree. With the other two sailors picking off girls en route, On the Town sings and dances, joshes and handsprings its way from Central Park to the Museum of Natural History, from Carnegie Hall to Times Square, from a flock of night spots to Coney Island. Wherever it goes, uptown or down, it shoves dullness off the curbstone.

To an enjoyable musicomedy book, 26-year-old Composer Bernstein (who got a royal bawling out from Serge Koussevitsky for trafficking with Broadway) has matched a lively score. There is a modern beat to his ballet music, but such songs as Lonely Town and Lucky To Be Me are as torchy as the next fellow's, and such ditties as Come Up To My Place and You Got Me are straight Main Stem--and with delightfully tough Nancy Walker to bawl them out, they are showstoppers as well. Jerome Robbin's dances have humor and verve, and charming Sono Osato to gladden them. Best of all, On the Town has the oldtime touch it needs: under George Abbott's direction, youth has made hay without going haywire, and a lot of slightly off-Broadway talent has been given a sharp Broadway spin.

In her second Broadway show, as in her first (One Touch of Venus), jet-haired, slant-eyed Sono Osato catches and keeps the spotlight. She has personality and piquant looks as well as nimble feet.

Born 25 years ago in Omaha, the daughter of a Japanese father and an Irish-French mother, she joined Col. de Basil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo when she was 14 and toured the world with it. Her roles got better, but her pay ($50 a week) did not--and she finally walked out. Three years ago, as a member of the Sol Hurok troupe, she made another ballet exit--when the Government refused to let her go to California because of her Japanese blood. Sono, who has a brother with the Nisei 442nd combat team and is married to a young French-Moroccan architect, has never had any other trouble over race.

Although she has been dancing all her life, she is no longer interested in that alone. Because she could also act and sing in On the Town, she turned down Billy Rose's offer to "back her up with 40 dancers" in The Seven Lively Arts. "Anyhow," says she, "if you're trying to be somebody, why get smothered under great big names like Beatrice Lillie's?"

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