The Week in Review

For its best efforts last week television dropped the boy-meets-girl formula in favor of separating the sexes. The women took superb command in Maurice Evans' production of The Cradle Song, a fable about a love affair between an abandoned infant and the nuns of a Spanish convent. Visually, it was as attractive as anything seen this year, with the beautiful faces of novices hanging raptly over the child's crib and their lullabies blending with the plainsong devotions from the chapel. The play was dreamlike, as sweet as a sugar bun and scarcely more substantial, but it was also sunlit with innocence and warmly acted by Judith Anderson. Evelyn Varden. Deirdre Owens and. particularly, by Ireland's Siobhan (pronounced Shivaun) McKenna.

Female Venom. The men offered a grim antidote to sweetness in The Sentry, a Civil War episode seen on NBC's Goodyear Playhouse. John Gay's original drama told of an attempt by three Confederates to destroy a railway bridge behind the Union lines, and the beat-up veterans were given a grimy reality by George Grizzard. Frank Overton and Si Oakland. But Author Gay had more success in writing his strongly individual characters than in handling the quirks and coincidences of his plot.

The women were back in ruthless force in the Studio One offering. The Drop of a Hat, a study of venomous infighting among the career girls on a Manhattan fashion magazine. Jayne Meadows and Elizabeth Montgomery had no difficulty proving the deadliness of the determined female, and Nina Foch worked herself into a convincing neurosis as their outmaneuvered victim. Few males could watch this show without a premonitory shudder. In fact, it was a bad wreek all around for the male.

Girl Gambler. On Robert Montgomery Presents, Actor John Newland made the mistake of marrying two women at the same time and ended in the electric chair. On Playwrights '56, Actor Larry Blyden won $74.000 on a quiz show and then spent an exhausting 60 minutes learning that it would not buy happiness. On the U.S. Steel Hour, Singer Ethel Merman was tearily dramatic as a girl who could not stop gambling--particularly with her fiance's money. Vaughn Taylor played her sad-sack lover and, at the play's end, viewers may have felt that his troubles were just beginning as he gamely settled down to married life with repentant Ethel. At week's end. Producer Max Liebman made a brave try at proving that it is still--partially, at least--a man's world with a tuneful tribute to the music of George Gershwin. But, again, the girls--led by Singers Ethel Merman, Toni Arden and Camilla Williams, Dancers Tanaquil LeClerq, Diana Adams and Patricia Wilde --practically elbowed the male performers off the stage.

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