Arts and Manners

O’Neill and Offenbach

New Girl in Town, the musical adaptation of O’Neill’s Anna Christie, follows the gold-mine formula of My Fair Lady: talk the songs through a veil of music, insert a stock comic character, and marry off the principals in the end. But O’Neill’s bittersweet romance does not respond to the treatment as did Shaw’s romp. Cymbals and athletic dancing do not seem out of place against the scintillating mental acrobatics of Pygmalion, but the sordid O’Neill atmosphere is quickly dispelled by the splash and blare of a Broadway musical.

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Garry Wills

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O’Neill and Offenbach

New Girl in Town, the musical adaptation of O’Neill’s Anna Christie, follows the gold-mine formula of My Fair Lady: talk the songs through a veil of music, insert a stock comic character, and marry off the principals in the end. But O’Neill’s bittersweet romance does not respond to the treatment as did Shaw’s romp. Cymbals and athletic dancing do not seem out of place against the scintillating mental acrobatics of Pygmalion, but the sordid O’Neill atmosphere is quickly dispelled by the splash and blare of a Broadway musical.