New Musical Play in Manhattan

St. Louis Woman (book by Arna Bontemps & the late Countee Cullen; music by Harold Arlen; lyrics by Johnny Mercer; produced by Edward Gross) shows something more than musicomedy's aspirations but something less than its appeal. An all-Negro period yarn of the '90s, it pins its faith almost entirely on its story and its music. But the story is too trite and trumped-up to deserve such prominent treatment. The music, which therefore needs to be specially engaging, is no more than agreeable.

This barroom-ballad of a tale concerns Delia Green (Ruby Hill), a loose and lovely charmer who chucks a saloonkeeper for a whirlwind jockey called Little Augie (Harold Nicholas). The saloonkeeper gets plugged by a discarded flame, but thinking that Augie fired the shot, puts a dying-breath curse on him. Augie's luck changes and, hoping to lift the jinx, Delia leaves him. But his luck soon returns, and so does the lady.

The bright side of St. Louis Woman is its musicomedy side. The show's only real dance number, a spanking cakewalk contest, has style and dash. The show's only real comic, Nightclub Singer Pearl Bailey, has the lumbering slink and lusty humor to turn two sex-salted ditties, Legalize My Name and A Woman's Prerogative into near showstoppers. The show's boisterous finale, with a frenzied crowd perched on rooftops and stepladders for a sneak-view of Augie's big race, has freshness, bounce. Lemuel Ayers's sets and costumes have musicomedy splash and color. But the audience, to earn its candy, has to get down a full plateful of spinach.

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