Soporific Spoof

Fade Out--Fade In is a musical comedy spoof of movies and moviemaking in the 1930s, but it unintentionally recalls a ritual of the prize ring--the introductory parade of ex-champs, somewhat fattened with age, who troop through the ropes, flash hearty grins at the crowd, and receive the perfunctory applause of nostalgic recognition. In more or less the same perfunctory way, Fade Out-Fade In gives walk-on-and-off bits of business to actors who play characters recognizable as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Shirley Temple and Bojangles Robinson, the Busby Berkeley chorines, Boris Karloff, Tarzan, Jean Harlow, the Marx Brothers, Garbo, Mae West, and Louella Parsons. Meanwhile, the main show goes down for the long, long count of boredom.

It tells the time-tattered tale of a plain-as-rain chorus girl (Carol Burnett) who is mistakenly hired for a star part by the usual illiterate czar of the predictably nepotistic studio, F.F.F. Pictures. With Ella Cinders in her eyes and a mouth a dentist could not open wider, Carol Burnett makes an appealing clown-waif in the celluloid jungle. As her leading man, Jack Cassidy is a personable peacock of vanity, but all his part calls for is preening.

Any playgoer who wants to cultivate amnesia need only listen to the Jule Styne music and the lyrics of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who also undid the book. Donald Brook's costumes are deliciously droll, right for the period, and colorful as the frosting on a birthday cake. They should be saved for another show.

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