Jolly Honeymooners

By T. E . Kalem

VERY GOOD EDDIE

Music by JEROME KERN Book by GUY BOLTON Lyrics by SCHUYLER GREENE

Revivals of stage Americana will be prominent in all the nation's theaters this year. Last week New York was treated to three such revivals that were done with mettlesome excellence.

Threescore years ago, Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton brought forth on Broadway a thoroughly beguiling musical. It retains all of its charm, innocence and naughty-nice merriment in the current David Merrick revival. Theatrically, 1915 must have been a very good year if it produced shows like Very Good Eddie.

Short v. Tall. The plot is Simon simple; yet it has all the engaging velocity of a Feydeau farce. Two short and jolly people, Eddie Kettle (Charles Repole) and Elsie Darling (Virginia Seidel), have just got married to two very tall and stuffy people, Georgina Kettle (Spring Fairbank) and Percy Darling (Nicholas Wyman). Precipitately, the foursome is separated as the two short people sail on a Hudson River excursion liner, and the tall people miss the boat. The couples reunite at the upriver Honeymoon Inn, where the explanations get hot, long and sticky, tempers get short, and the fun gets frantic. Among the funsters is a voice teacher (Travis Hudson) who resembles Margaret Dumont of Marx Bros, film renown.

Very Good Eddie is a picture-post card show, done without a single lapse of style. Kern's songs are sprightly and unhackneyed, Greene's lyrics are clever, and Dan Siretta's dances are period perfect. Everyone deserves the pleasure of this able cast's dandy company, and David Merrick, who used to send out macabre holiday cards, is obviously wishing all of us a happy '76 .

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