Football Flapdoodle

By Stefan Kanfer

GOOD NEWS

Book by LAWRENCE SCHWAB, B.G. DE SYLVA,

FRANK MANDEL

Adapted by GARRY MARSHALL

Music and lyrics by DE SYLVA,

BROWN & HENDERSON

Good News might be the ideal way to greet the New Year -- if only this were 1927. After nearly a year on the road, the revivalists have managed to iron out all the show's wrinkles. They are now presenting them onstage. The ancient flapdoodle of a plot (updated to the mid-'30s) hinges upon the success of a college football team, a situation the Marx Brothers sent up for ever in Horse Feathers of 1932. The De Sylva, Brown & Henderson score, much of it shanghaied from other mu sicals, is loaded with bolts of melody.

But from Keep Your Sunny Side Up to The Best Things in Life Are Free, they have been recorded so frequently that one can almost hear needle scratches as the cast belts them out. As the aging astronomy prof, and the geriatric football coach, Alice Faye and Gene Nelson attempt to hoof and puff and blow the house down; they only succeed in underlining the show's decrepitude. Nor can Michael Kidd's manic drill-sergeant direction hide the melancholy truth that because a thing is old does not mean it is an antique; junk is junk.

Stefan Kanfer

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