Old Title in Manhattan

Shuffle Along (music & lyrics by Eubie Blake & Noble Sissle; book by Flournoy Miller & Paul Gerard Smith) is an almost totally different show from the one that Broadway took to its heart in 1921. Unhappily, in fact, it is not really a show at all. A ragged World War II yarn about a lively WAC widow whose husband turns out not to be dead, it shambles and stumbles along in the choking dust of old dialect gags, while the music and dancing seem to prolong the agony rather than interrupt it. From the old days, Shuffle Along has wisely retained I'm Just Wild About Harry and Love Will Find a Way, and two or three of the new tunes are pleasant enough. But the score lacks class, and if the dancing sometimes, has the pep, it also has the formlessness of street urchins hoofing for pennies.

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