On the Town, written in 1944 by Betty Comden; Adolph Green, and Leonard Bernstein as a fancy-free and slightly before-its-time first-effort, has settled down into comfortable period-piecedom. Quincy House has revived this product from the age of Chiquita Banana and has missed little of the charm of a show about three rube sailors who fall in love with three city girls while on 24-hour leave in New York.

Director Chris Arnold has several advantages in putting On the Town on the stage: a number of good voices and as many good actors, including some surprisingly competent bit players. He has an an imaginative and ambitious choreographer in Chet D'Elia, and in Judy Friedlander a costume mistress who evokes early Forties styles exceedingly well. But there are also disabilities. For one thing, the stage is not much larger than a hopscotch square, and it shows up any amateur faults in the show's drive for professional slickness.

Naturally the stage cramps D'Elia's choreography, which suffers from overambition. The dancers are good, being recruits from the Boston Conservatory and refugees from the Jazz Dance Workshop, but they have so much complex work to do in this ballet-heavy musical that they don't always move sharply or together. The girls tend to be more effective than the men.

Another difficulty is the treacherous syncopation of Bernstein's score, which sometimes leaves stragglers among the singers. The six-piece orchestra under John Forster keeps up with the score amazingly well, although it cries for a little fleshing out. Predictably the most effective numbers are the slowest and the smallest--a duet in a taxi cab and an enchanting quartet in a subway car. The most ragged number is the heavily-syncopated "New York, New York," which could stand some rehearsing to metronomes.

The final problem with On the Town is that Comden and Green teamed up to write an unnecessarily slow second act, which gets bogged down in period parody of New York night clubs. A director can help the long night-club scene by pacing it almost out of existence. But this particular director has pacing problems which result from the long scene changes; there is no way of getting around the stage waits but a little more traveling music from the orchestra would help.

Director Arnold and his cast have overcome most of these obstacles. Arnold's blocking is graceful and he has staged all but the biggest numbers with finesse. The three sailors on leave who bring such simplicity to the Big City that they make it seem cozy are convincingly naive without becoming cute. All three have excellent voices, and both Robert Bush and Robert Calvert give remarkably well-timed and energetic performances.

Arnold, who plays the third sailor, has worked overtime giving himself gestures and tends to be too studied. The sailor's girls--Alice Nagel, Barbara Menaker and Carol Baer--are well-cast, sweet-voiced and couldn't be more appealing.

On the Townis so ambitious and so often good that it makes one wish it were closer to perfect. For instance, this and every other House production needs, but never gets, ingenious, imaginative lighting effects to help out the necessarily modest sets. (On the Town's sets, designed by W. Chappell and Michael Dyett, feature a clevel mosaic New York Skyline but suffer from being too close to the audience--which is why some brilliant lighting might help).

Bernstein's score includes some lovely tunes, the book successfully trades on skimpy plot and cabdriver jokes, and this winning production provides as good an incentive as Quincy's private kitchen for a trip to the Quincy dining hall.