Terpsichore's Child

Sweet Charity. Gwen Verdon is the dancer assoluta of the U.S. musical stage. She moves to the impulsive music of instinct as a child laughs and a dolphin leaps. She is Terpsichore's darling and yet fortune's foil. She is a wistful waif out of a Chaplin two-reeler, a Broadway gamin skipping along the harsh pavements of defeat with perky gallantry, one of nature's eternally winning losers. Verdon is verdant, and it is lucky that all is well with her, for all is not so well with her musical.

Charity throws the stalest book in the house at the house, the story of a doxy with a heart of gold, a taxi dancer who always falls for men who are either too sly or too shy to do her any good. In his weakest script to date, Neil Simon (Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple) seems to have heard rather than written the gags, and the dialogue is stippled with vulgarities, presumably aimed at the expense account trade.

Redeeming touches of grace are provided by Choreographer-Director Bob Fosse. His diamond-bright "Rich Man's Frug" is artfully precise mock-mimicry of the discotheque set. Fosse's dances always say something about the society that breeds them, and his jazz-oriented "Rhythm of Life" church number is a wry comment on religious hipsteria. The score is useful rather than enchanting, but one song, There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This, threatens to become the mood music of everyone who ever hated his or her job.

As the baptism of vaudeville's fabled Palace as a legitimate Broadway theater house, Sweet Charity is scarcely memorable, but its first dancer and all its dances are just dandy.

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