Last evening the Playwrights' Company presented a new musical comedy entitled "Knickerbocker Holiday" with book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill, and the production by Joshua Logan; viewed in toto, the show will not be one of great appeal to collegiate theatregoers.

Dealing with the story of early New Amsterdam life as seen through the eyes of Washington Irving, "Knickerbocker Holiday" is delightful only so long as the author contents himself with a certain ingratiating naivete; unfortunately Mr. Anderson was not content to leave the pleasant subtlety of his first act as the underlying essence of the whole production. Evidently he did not think his audience would enjoy drawing their own parallel between the pleasantly autocratic regime of Peter Stuyvesant and the government of today; before the comedy has run its course, the simile becomes more and more obvious to die in somewhat labored political satire.

Walter Huston, in the role of Stuyvesant, superb actor that he is, finds himself way over his head without a singing voice. The love interest is carried adequately, but no more than that, by Jean Madden and Richard Kollmar; the script gives them nothing to do, and Mr. Kollmar faces tremendous odds when he is called upon to plead the ancient American axiom that men are not true men unless they think for themselves.

Mr. Weill's twenty-two numbers are of the operetta type, hardly exciting with the exception of "How Can You Tell an American" and "The Scars", and are excellently rendered by the chorus; the principals, however, are less successful. Mr. Logan's work is good, but Mr. Mielziner's sets are a disappointment. Decidedly the show's happiest interludes come by virtue of the seven burghers of New Amsterdam.

Extremely slow in getting headway, "Knickerbocker Holiday" has moments of inspired pleasantry, but the stretches between these oases are long and dry indeed.