The boys and girls are queens together at the Shubert Theatre for the next two weeks, and it's all feasting and fun. That theatre fast we've endured is over at long last; "All's Fair," the new Dwight Deere Wiman musical comedy, has hove into town. If you're interested, the title is taken from the old saw about "All's fair in love and war." And certainly the doings on the Shubert stage are equitable enough. It's a definite pleasure to report that the show is a sharp buy. All the attributes of a top musical are embodied in the book and score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.
In this case the boys really had something to build on. The plot is based on "The Warrior's Husband," a farce by Julian S. Thompson, acted on Broadway some ten years back by Katherine Hepburn. The time is the B. C.'s; Hippolyta is Queen of the Amazons, that tribe of women warriors who thought that man's place was in the home. She marries shy, sissified Sapiens, son of Pomposia, who has a corner on the spear and arrow market, in order to get the necessary armaments to ward off an attacking Greek army. As long as Hippolyta wears her golden girdle, the women will rule. So the Greeks send Hercules to challenge the Queen in combat and get that girdle. Hoppolyta gives it to Antiope, the mighty huntress, who loses it to Theseus, the handsome Greek warrior, while learning how a man makes love. Sapiens, let loose in the Greek camp, discovers his manhood, asserts his authority as king, and establishes for all time the dominance of masculinity.
Ray Bolger, with his unsurpassed clowning and comedy dancing, sets the pace for the show, as the original pansy, Sapiens. Take his rendition of a naughty balled entitled "Life With Father," for instance, or his slapstick technique with Benay Venuta, the properly Amazonian Hippolyta, in "Ev'rything I've Got Belongs To You." Constance Moore, recruited from the flickers, is a pretty dish as the strong and tasty Antiope. She doesn't know what to do with her hands yet, but her songs are well delivered and she has a nice comic sense.
This is one musical in which the book and the music just about balance. They are both top-notch, though you may find a trifle too much talk in the second act. The times are in the traditional Rodgers and Hart pattern, but not so repetitions as they have been in the past. "Nobody's Heart Belongs to Mc" is a fine and mellow torch number; "The Gateway of the Temple of Minerva" is a hot boogic woogie special. And "Careless Rhapsody" is another song you'll be whistling soon.
Jo Miclziner has delivered some simple, yet ingenious sets, that harmonize nicely with Irene Sharaff's stylized costumes. Robert Alton has staged the dances brilliantly with all the verve and sharpness of his past work. And the whole combination sets the scene for Ray Bolger, who has never been in better form, capering and cavorting through the gayest musical of the year.
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