George M!

One sure sign of a poor musical is that it consists of all work and no play. The dancers pound the floor boards like maniacal trip hammers. Sweat glazes the hero as his arms flail, his eyes pop, and he tries to kick his toes into the wings. To amplify the hollow book, microphones soup up the sound till it becomes the aural equivalent of the medieval ordeal by fire. George M!--the latest of the Broadway season's unbroken string of execrable musicals--qualifies on all counts.

The evening is essentially a family album of George M. Cohan's music. This may be the only musical at which the audience comes into the theater humming the songs. They hold up remarkably well, even though they celebrate the memory of a simple, ardent and unskeptical U.S. that no longer exists. No one now can summon up the unblemished patriotic fervor of You're a Grand Old Flag, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Over There. Few men now can adorn a woman in the romantic gauze and adoring awe of a song like Mary. Every addicted New Yorker and theatergoer will always feel a special tingle of sentiment from the opening bars of Give My Regards to Broadway, but the contrast with the squalor of Times Square now is painful.

The songs may camouflage the missing book but they cannot carry the show. Joel Grey tries to do that but the way his character has been written forces him to exhibit either a cocky disdain for others or an egomaniacal worship of self. It is more fun to watch Grey's nimble feet than his distressingly overworked features.

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