The New Season

Imagine going to Boston to hear dialogue like this:

"Do you care for bingo?"

"Who is bingo?"

Nonetheless. Loelia. Duchess of Westminster, did. So did Judy Garland. Richard Rodgers. Howard Lindsay, Russell Grouse. Alfred Lunt. Lynn Fontanne. and so on down the gold-plated guest list at the out-of-town premiere last week of Noel Coward's new musical comedy, Sail Away. The show will open in Manhattan Oct. 3, but first Coward's story, set on a Mediterranean cruise ship, will probably undergo a considerable shakedown. Involving miscellaneous love stories, particularly the experiences of an American wife (Jean Fenn) who loses her inhibitions under the Mediterranean sun. Sail Away is sometimes too reminiscent of the first Noel, and much of it seemed wooden to Boston critics. But Elaine Stritch, as the cruise hostess, is full of verve. Joe Layton's choreography is superb, and the lyrics are delightful, as when they ask the ultimate question on tourism:

Why do the wrong people travel?

Please do not think that I criticize or cavil

At a genuine urge to roam,

But why, oh why, do the wrong people travel

When the right people stay at home?

The first of Broadway's fall shows to enter its tryout run, Sail Away leads a list of productions that generally look--as they always do in prospect--impressive. Among the highlights:

sbCOMEDIES: Sir Michael Redgrave stars in Graham Greene's The Complaisant Lover, in which the author grins rather than glooms over sin; the play, a solid London hit, involves a love triangle, with a cuckolded dentist at the base (Nov. 1). Julie Harris will appear as a chambermaid employed by a French millionaire in Marcel Achard's The Naked Truth. Playwright John Patrick (The Teahouse of the August Moon) returns to Broadway with Everybody Loves Opal, starring Eileen Heckart (Oct. 11).

sb DRAMAS:, A tramp moves in with two exceedingly odd brothers in Redbriack. Dramatist Harold Pinter's The Caretaker , a hit last year in London (Oct. 4). Playwright Paddy Chayefsky is back again . This time with a contemporary treatment of the Old Testaments Gideon in which a poor farmer becomes a military genius and Fredric March walks the stage as an angel of God (Nov. 9). Broadway audiences will get their first look at much-acclaimed British Actor Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons, a study of Sir Thomas More (Nov. 22). Tennessee Williams has now gone so far south that his new play. The Night of the Iguana, is set in Acapulco, with Patrick O'Neal playing a defrocked minister turned tourist guide serving as a psychological shepherd for Bette Davis and Margaret Leighton (Dec. 28). A. E. Hotchner, whose text adaptations of Ernest Hemingway short stories have been scattered across the past two television seasons, has prepared The Short Happy Life for Broadway, based on 15 Hemingway stories, with a cast that includes Rod Steiger and Salome Jens (week of Nov. 27). Daughter of Silence, set in Italy and centered in the murder of a mayor, is a new play by Morris L. West (The Devil's Advocate), starring Emlyn Williams (week of Nov. 20).

sbMUSICALS: George Gobel. making his Broadway debut, will wander innocently through a scrimmage of pimps, hoods and horseplayers in Let It Ride, a musical version of the 1935 George Abbott and John Cecil Holm farce, Three Men on a Horse (Oct. 6). Milk and Honey, set in Israel and involving American tourists, stars Yiddish Comedienne Molly Picon (Oct. 10). How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying may reveal some of the inner secrets of its director, Abe Burrows, riding a score by Guys and Dolls' Frank Loesser (Oct. 14). Man at the crossroads in Africa is the subject of Kwamina, with score and lyrics by Richard Adler (Damn Yankees) (Oct. 23). Jean-Paul Sartre's Kean, drawn from the life of igth century Tragedian Edmund Kean and set in London's Drury Lane Theater, becomes a musical starring Alfred Drake (Nov. 2). The Affairs of Anatol, Arthur Schnitzler's sweet-cynical, turn-of-the-century portrait of a world-weary Viennese Don Juan, inspires The Gay Life, with music and lyrics by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz (Nov. 18). The integrated talents of Negro Oscar Brown Jr. have resulted in the book, lyrics and music of Kicks & Co., described as "a cynically comic portrayal of America." with a biracial cast of 45. Brown held a backers' audition for his musical before the entire U.S. on TV's Today show, got so many pledges that he sent back a surplus $160,000 to would-be investors (November). The newest collaboration of Betty Comden and Adolf Green (with music by Jule Styne) is Subways Are for Sleeping, starring Charlie Chaplin's second son, Sydney (Dec. 26).

sbSPECIALTIES: Chicago's much-touted Second City improvisational group-where Comedians Shelley Berman, Mike Nichols and Elaine May all began their careers--will bring a new revue to Broadway (Sept. 26). Comedian Mort Sahl is this season's man behind the Golden Theater's 9 o'clock curtain (Dec. 26); and French Actor-Singer Yves Montana" will do a one-man soiree full of songs and sex (Oct. 24).

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