This total exposure of genteel lust is an invitation from Mr. Noel Coward to step into his parlor. Once enmeshed in that strategically appointed web, the spectator is enticed by sheer wit to rest his repressions as the master's charming child-adults parade their riotously adulterous lives. The Blithe Spirit Private Lives formula is only slightly varied, but the cracks are fresh and strictly bon ton. Here are no new ideas, no thought, no stimulation--unless concurrent mistresses is your idea of a good time. Dear Noel's world, artfully constructed of gold cloth and pastel pasteboard, contains no people, at least not the kind that inhabit the world. Rather does this craftsman of the sex comedy take into his delicate hands again the familiar set of dolls and sends them whirling on the polished floor, kidding, insulting, wallowing in the tart and tasty intoxication of flip sophisms and casual sex play. The effect in startlingly funny.

Leading the latest procession from parlor to bedroom is the incomparable mountebank, Clifton Webb, gracefully balancing Noel's sheaf of tarts and darts. He hits the razor's edge with every gesture, shrug and intonation. Up against this kind of finesse Monty Wooley would be made to look like a blundering clod. Portraying the actor whose life aim begins and ends with his own convenience, Webb does a pungently sophisticated job of lechery and of molding the lives of the satellite circle of blustering men and urbane women who serve as his foils.

The story is lasciviously simple, especially for those with an eye for triangles and the more intricate geometrics d'amour so deftly contrived by the remorseless Noel. At the apex is the immoral Gary Essendine (Webb), whom Noel has attempted to bless with his own aphroditie charm, the eomic pace of Grouche Marx and the caustic sauciness of Woolcott. Perched giddily atop the crotic ding dong of assorted amours is a rare fruit who barely manages to sublimate his passion for Gary. This catalogue of irregular and illicit love left the bean monde opening nighters in a happy sweat. In less than two weeks the divertisement will be over two hundred miles away.