New Play on Broadway

Midgie Purvis (by Mary Chase) presents Tallulah Bankhead as an oddball society matron who masquerades as a very old lady. Young-hearted Midgie Purvis has long embarrassed her family as a kind of card-of-all-work, and when her son begs that she meet his fiancee and her family in decorous matronly style, she decamps instead. Taking rooms behind a candy store, she turns into a frowsy, fumbly baby sitter who suddenly goes on the loose with her three young charges, causing nocturnal havoc as she careens about and more havoc when it comes out who she is. Her son finds her and confesses what fun she has always really been, and she ruefully abandons her wig and her wandering to go home.

The author of Harvey has attempted another wistfully whimsical frolic, some further genially wacky escapism. But she has not pulled another rabbit out of her hat or even put enough bees in Tallulah's bonnet. Her sort of nursery-rhyme old crone scampering upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber has in places a nursery-rhyme lilt, but far too often a thin, struggling farce's laboredness. The kinfolk and clubwomen who keep trooping in and out make the struggle even harder. The play has charming moments, but only moments; flashes of bright Harveyesque humor, but only flashes.

It has also, of course, a gamely resourceful Tallulah, now Charlestoning, now sliding down banisters and firemen's poles, now swinging far out across the stage, or making utterance in her best Bankhead baritone, or looking for just a second like grandmother turning into the wolf. But for all that, granny's not up to a whole evening, while Midgie Purvis is scarcely alive for half of one.

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