New Musical in Manhattan

Look, Ma, I'm Dancin' (music & lyrics by Hugh Martin; book by Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee; produced by George Abbott) hit on a bright subject for a musical: ballet. There was plenty to spotlight, spoof, and splash with color. But Look, Ma isn't quite up to the job. It has its undeniable high points; but as a whole it doesn't come off.

Though Look, Ma has all the special ingredients needed for a musicomedy about ballet, it lacks the right basic ingredients of musicomedy itself. Jerome Robbins has worked out some delightful dances; gifted Harold Lang and others do some delightful dancing; and Nancy Walker, a fine comic, takes excellent care of the comedy. But the minute Look, Ma gives its toes a rest, it becomes all thumbs. Its music is not very bright, and its book is downright dull.

Rather unfortunately, too, the show puts its best foot forward too fast: its best dance and its one good ditty come in the first 15 minutes. After a wonderfully lively dance sequence opening, Comedienne Walker bawls out the sad saga of a little nobody-much:

I'm the first girl In the second row In the third scene Of the fourth number In fifth position . . . In Igrouchka, I'm a fairy In Petrouchka I'm a bear And in Sylphides I am something That will really curl your hair.*

*Copyright 1947 by Hugh Martin, New York. By permission of the publisher, Chappell & Co., Inc., New York.

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