New Musical in Manhattan

The Day before Spring (music by Frederick Loewe; book & lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; produced by John C. Wilson) juts up above the messy season's other musical exhibits, but is still slightly below see level. It is tasteful and tuneful, has some pleasant performers, an agreeable look. Even so, it is too much like a rubber ball that is new, pretty, smooth--and just won't bounce.

One reason why The Day before Spring is something less than a gay Broadway show is that it tries too hard to be something more. It strives, commendably enough, for a special brand of freshness, but in refusing to be conventionally breezy it only gets becalmed.

The plot concerns a wife (Irene Manning) who, at a college reunion, meets the man (Bill Johnson) she almost eloped with ten years before. Romantically stirred by a novel he has written about her, she again agrees to elope, again doesn't quite. Unlike the usual musicomedy plot, this one is never for a moment let out of the audience's sight, is even shoved into two boring Antony Tudor ballets. Vocally it pays off with such schmalzy tunes as The Day before Spring and / Love You This Morning, a lively ditty called Where's My Wife?

But verbally it is a desperately worldly triangle story. Trying for sophistication, it is too proud for wisecracks but too poor for wit.

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