Old Musical in Manhattan

On Your Toes (music & lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart; book by Rodgers, Hart and George Abbott) is a good deal oftener on its uppers. The musical that in 1936 really put jazz ballet on Broadway, On Your Toes was perhaps from the start pretty much all thumbs where it wasn't nifty footwork. Time has tended to merge the show and the ballet into one, but they are scarcely more alike than Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

Not that with its Balanchine choreography On Your Toes still hasn't its points as a dance show. With its throbbing

Rodgers score, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue remains--when such ballets are no longer news--vibrant and exciting. There is a fine dancing rampage to go with the title song; Zorina, in the part she played in London 17 years ago, still has grace and charm; Bobby Van, in Ray Bolger's old role, has much of the master's ease and dexterity; Elaine Stritch stops the show with an aggressively lowdown warbling of an added song, You Took Advantage of Me. But for notable stretches there is torpor on 46th Street.

There are very nice songs like There's a Small Hotel, but Rodgers gave the show a ballet rather than top-drawer show music, and Hart gave it lyrics that tend to shout their cleverness. It is the Rodgers-Hart-Abbott libretto, however, that lays a curse upon the evening--the look, if ever there was one, of three men on an elephant.

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