New Musical on Broadway

Greenwillow (music and lyrics by Frank Loesser; book by Lesser Samuels and Mr. Loesser; based on B. J. Chute's novel) takes the composer of Guys and Dolls for a long ride--from a tough Manhattan of floating crap games to a quaint folk region of scampering rustics. An off-in-the-distance village, Greenwillow is also an out-of-the-past one and might conceivably be Rip Van Winkle country; its doings, at least, could put people to sleep for 20 years. It offers a woodsy, folksy, pixie world where people hear a devil's call to wander, where a stern ramrod reverend and a kindly rolypoly one share the same pulpit, where Anthony Perkins, as a bedeviled wanderer's son, is afeared to marry his sweetheart, where people dart out of portable outhouses, or go in for bucolic frisks and nocturnal rituals, or pay such compliments as: "Cow has more but you are nicer."

Greenwillow's is a world, in short, where every day seems like Arbor Day and every night like Halloween, inhabited by people who are most often seen on calendars. Whatever the charm of Greenwillow the novel, the play is as vague in its storytelling as in its geography. It offers lovers but no proper love story, devils but no improper temptations, and the sort of artificially flavored language that tries to be folk poetry but turns out as horrible prose. Doubtless some people will think it delightful, but anyone with memories of a J. M. Synge must find its whimsies bogus, while people with memories of a J. M. Barrie should find its cuteness grim.

Against all this, the dancing helps little, for being too much in the same spirit; and the music does not help enough. Composer Loesser has written some pleasantly catchy tunes and some ringing, folk-operatic choruses. But it is not first-rate Loesser, and it merely provides bright spots in an irritatingly dull evening.

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