New Musical in Manhattan

Wonderful Town (book by Joseph Fields & Jerome Chodorov; music by Leonard Bernstein; lyrics by Betty Comden & Adolph Green) is a kind of deluxe special train for bringing Hollywood's Rosalind Russell in triumph to Broadway. It is one of those happy musicals that have not just a lot of miscellaneous virtues but that are thoroughly professional from first to last. It has high points but no nosedives, and along with a sustained musicomedy briskness, preserves a genuine comedy air.

A musical version of My Sister Eileen, it plumps down two Ohio girls in a Greenwich Village basement. Ruth wants to write and Eileen to act; Ruth is all thumbs where men are concerned, while Eileen doesn't even need to crook her little finger. Against a background of the '30s, Wonderful Town gives a mockingbird's-eye view of a weirdly wonderful Village. But it does more than spoof Bohemia; it also, in the very act of going it one better, spoofs Broadway. Its knack of being tongue-in-cheek as well as on its toes--of caricaturing a typical hot-spot scene while capturing its excitement--keeps things both fast and funny.

Out of an entertaining play, Fields & Chodorov have made an entertaining libretto. The Comden-Green lyrics are not just clever, but humorous and light. Donald Saddler's dances have all the Village's abandon and none of its artiness. Above all, there is Leonard Bernstein's remarkably bright score--now refreshingly offbeat, now nostalgically noisy, now suddenly lyrical with the hymnlike sweetness of A Quiet Girl.

As Eileen, Edith Adams is pretty, pert and youthful. As Ruth, Rosalind Russell--after a fine, long movie career in both comic and dramatic roles--is an authentic musicomedy performer with her first try. Even vocally she disdains a blah competence, boldly suggests a raven with a throat condition. Pleasant in her less antic scenes, she is brilliant at shenanigans--when she goes glassy-eyed and narcotic with jive, or first congas with members of the Brazilian navy, then swings from a sort of crow's nest atop their shoulders.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.