Make Mine Camelot

At the risk of engaging in conduct unbecoming a critic, I’ll take Camelot. Admitted it’s the grandest, the most lavish, the most expensive show on Broadway (this in itself is enough to ensure critical wrath), it’s also the best musical to hit town since Fiorello!—and it was high time. Of this year’s musical offerings, three, Irma La Douce, The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Wildcat are one-woman shows. One’s liking for them is roughly in ratio to one’s admiration for the particular star. And enough people seem to be getting a kick out of the gamine antics of Elizabeth Seal, Tammy Grimes’ boisterous hamming and Lucille Ball’s brand of slapstick to keep their theaters well-nigh filled. But why Do Re Mi, and to a lesser extent Tenderloin, have been so heartily acclaimed beats me. That Do Re Mi was, by and large, more warmly received than Camelot can only be put down to the resolute determination of New York’s leading critics not to be swept away by the latest Lerner and Loewe.

In an era when most Broadway productions, no matter what their content, come gorgeously packaged, the sets ofDoReMi strike one as tasteless, garish and unimaginative. Like the rest of the show. One can almost hear the IBM computer click out the formula for success: so many comedy routines, so many pretty girls, so many dances, a dash of sentiment and there you have it, a slick, fast brassy show—with about as much heart as an amoeba.

PL

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Priscilla L. Buckley

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At the risk of engaging in conduct unbecoming a critic, I’ll take Camelot. Admitted it’s the grandest, the most lavish, the most expensive show on Broadway (this in itself is enough to ensure critical wrath), it’s also the best musical to hit town since Fiorello!—and it was high time. Of this year’s musical offerings, three, Irma La Douce, The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Wildcat are one-woman shows. One’s liking for them is roughly in ratio to one’s admiration for the particular star. And enough people seem to be getting a kick out of the gamine antics of Elizabeth Seal, Tammy Grimes’ boisterous hamming and Lucille Ball’s brand of slapstick to keep their theaters well-nigh filled. But why Do Re Mi, and to a lesser extent Tenderloin, have been so heartily acclaimed beats me. That Do Re Mi was, by and large, more warmly received than Camelot can only be put down to the resolute determination of New York’s leading critics not to be swept away by the latest Lerner and Loewe.

In an era when most Broadway productions, no matter what their content, come gorgeously packaged, the sets ofDoReMi strike one as tasteless, garish and unimaginative. Like the rest of the show. One can almost hear the IBM computer click out the formula for success: so many comedy routines, so many pretty girls, so many dances, a dash of sentiment and there you have it, a slick, fast brassy show—with about as much heart as an amoeba.