New Revue in Manhattan

New Faces of '56--Producer Leonard Sillman seems to be restricting these shindigs to presidential-election years--is agreeably sassy and glossily intimate. If there is a serious weakness, it is much the weakness of New Faces of '52: the product isn't really up to the packaging. Peter Larkin, largely with airy spiral staircases and rows of slatted doors, has created gay all-purpose backgrounds, and Thomas Becher has brought to the costuming just the right lunacy or lure. The 19 new faces are often expressive as well as likable, the show moves pleasantly along, the turns vary considerably in style.

They also vary considerably in merit. The best job is young Actor T. C. Jones's female impersonations, especially of Tallulah. Short-haired Billie Hayes makes a lively ditty of / Could Love Him, Virginia Martin a lively ditty of Talent. In La Ronde a foursome smoothly act out a liltish tune. Funniest spoof proves to be one more take-off on a big Ziegfeld-era staircase number, with a showgirl, rigged out like an entire orange grove, having a ghastly time on the stairs. There is fun in Steady, Edna, which rags a British jungle film, while an upper-class British domestic skit has a husband shouting, "To hell with cricket," and his wife replying coldly, "Any one who would say that would strike the Queen."

There are also some skits going down for the third time with their first remark, and human dolls being dainty and very dull, and people who whirl energetically about acting out their dreams. Such things make it hard to apply to the show as a whole any more commodious word of praise than cheerful or friendly.

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