New Musical in Manhattan

Michael Todd's Peep Show is one of those torrid salutes to sex that are considered especially well suited to hot weather. Naturally, it tends to differ from anyone else's peep show, for in recent years nobody has equaled Producer Mike Todd at making burlesque resplendent, respectable and remunerative on Broadway. Of legs and the girl he sings, believing that for many a customer the lure of the female form outranks anything devisable by the human brain. Nonetheless, in show business the human brain can be a help; and Peep Show needs a terrible lot of helping.

Its girls are many, and often truly magnificent, whether in fine feathers or bare flesh. They strut and prance and gorgeously fill the stage, bringing the breath of life to tired businessmen--and God knows what to such as are not tired. Otherwise, Peep Show's cupboard is almost as bare as its chorines. The skits, which Bobby Clark staged but did not act in, are mostly ancient and frightful. The one exception: an almost hilarious take-off on The Cocktail Party. Only a little less crushing than the sketches are the more monumental of the spectacles. One of these dramatizes a song called Blue Night by a songwriter called Bhumibol in the program but "Your Majesty" in Siam, where he is the newly crowned, 22-year-old King.

The songs lack color, too. The only real support accorded the female form comes from Irene Sharaff, who has clothed it (when it is clothed at all) sumptuously, from two brilliant jugglers named Peiro, and from "Peanuts" Mann banging the daylights out of a drum.

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