It is always painful to witness the nativity of a new musical production, but the embryonic pangs experienced by the initial performance of the eighth Greenwich Village "Follies" at the Shubert Theatre this week were rather poignantly and inconsiderately forced upon the innocent spectator. In its entirety it left much the same impression that a mid-year examination wrestled with but not downed, leaves. Certainly it is no place for the student who has an examination the next day, as it requires at least 24 hours to recover from the chaotic mass of folly presented. Nor will the weary student trying to recover from the effects of an examination have his tired brain solaced. The 1928 edition of the "Follies" at this stage of its short life is a stimulant rather than a drug.

However, it is possible that no innocent student should wind his merry way to the Shubert unchaperoned these days. For there he will encounter nothing but various concoctions all labelled "naughty" and exploiting various and sundry degress of "it". The "Follies" have a butter-and-egg complex, and supplement everything risque with the 100 beautiful legs of the 50 glorious Greenwich models. While it is dernier cri in New York smartness, the closest glimpse one gets of the notorious Village is a night club whose snaky denizens seem to be suffering from the effects of the last rehearsals. Indeed, it takes "Roxie", Chicago's most successful woman murderess, to start things in the night club as well as in the "Follies."

Blossom Seeley as "Roxie" of Chicago is the "sex appeal" of the production. Vividly blond, with a Tanguay voice, and costumes to match, she is the most contagious if not the stellar light of the edition. Miss Grace Brinkley in the lead is very beautiful and very dumb. As an ingenue Laura Lee she manages to hold down her end of the flighty show rather well. As for the males in the cast, no one but Dr. George Rockwell was enabled or deserved to occupy the spotlight unduly long. After much perserverance he managed to exhaust the resistance of the audience and get it into a laughing mood.

Altogether the eighth "Follies" is one of those mammoth spectacles which, beginning in Boston, ultimately reaches New York without a single number of the opening night left in it. There it will not create a sensation but it will certainly carry on an old tradition before audiences which like its wares. Were it for its beautiful girls alone it would be played before capacity audiences. While Ziegfeld has his production on a higher plane of humor he certainly will have to look to the laurels of his "glorified" girls. After all, why are the "Follies" so popular if not because of its feminine attractions?