Siren on the Rocks

By Martha Duffy

LORELEI

Music by JULE STYNE

Lyrics by LEO ROBIN, BETTY COMDEN

and ADOLPH GREEN

Twenty-five years ago, Carol Channing first enchanted Broadway as Lorelei Lee, the platinum-haired, platinum-headed blonde who gave the world the Little Rock wisdom that diamonds are a girl's best friend. That was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the musical hit that made her an instant star. It may be too late to revive that show, which never laughed quite hard enough at itself, but Lorelei is a particularly tawdry retread. Jule Styne has added a few routine songs; and the book, originally by Anita Loos and Joseph Fields, has been updated by Kenny Solms and Gail Parent. Lorelei has been touring the country for eleven months. Perhaps that is why not even the Art Deco sets -- inappropriate for a 1920s story-- look fresh. The book, which always had the flaw of seeming more heartless than its heroine, now seems just plain crass.

What happens to Channing should not befall any hard-working superstar. At the play's beginning, she is a rich widow mourning her husband by wearing every awful gem he ever gave her. About to board the Ile de France, she recalls an earlier, gayer voyage. The rest of the evening flashes back to Gentlemen.

Needless to say, Channing, who is now 51 , looks much too old for the part. A young Lorelei seems naive, but a seasoned one is merely brazen. Instead of throwing herself into the proceedings, Carol seems to expend her energy with utmost calculation. Apart from a couple of production numbers, she remains almost stationary and is offstage altogether for the strenuous tap-dance sequences. Even her vocal tricks -- going from bass through squeak in breathtaking spoken roulades -- now sound like a ventriloquist's act.

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