For the life of me I couldn’t think of any unifying theme about the musicals under review except the negative ones: _ there are no nude scenes and the fun and games are all heterosexual. Bawdiness yes, vulgarity yes, you’ll find plenty of that, particularly in = Canterbury Tales, but no undress. From the moment Martyn Greene (Chaucer) comes forward and in his mellifluous, _ beautifully-modulated voice intones: When in April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root . . . Then people long to go on pilgrimage Toward Canterbury they were wont to ride . you are back among Chaucer’s merry, mischievous and _ lecherous pilgrims (and for one dreadful moment I was back in Mr. Patch’s History of the English Language course). The travelers have arrived at an inn on the first day : = of their four-day pilgrimage to Canter_ bury. The Host makes them welcome: “Welcome high, and welcome lowly _ Welcome secular, and welcome holy.” He bids them dine. And the first of the bits of stagecraft that make Canter bury Tales a little different and superior happens. The guests unroll a long strip of cloth on which are painted the plates and cutlery, the tankards of beer and glasses of wine. And they are, at once, at table. The Host bids them all good night, the heads and the feet of two gigantic fourposter beds appear and suddenly they are, women on one side, and men on the other, in bed (except that, it being Chaucer, one of the ladies is somehow misplaced). Each evening one of the pilgrims (the Miller, the Steward, the Merchant, the Knight) tells a tale of youth and lust and, inevitably, someone cuckolded; of young men and old and not-so-innocent maids. To see George Rose as the decrepit bachelor January about to take to himself wife—an obedient young maid who must be a virgin; to see him in nightshirt and long black and white striped stockings and bedcap singing a grinning toothless calypso to the delights in store tonight is to rock with laughter because you know, and his friends know, and the demure young maiden knows that he’ll be wearing horns before the week is out. The music is a delight: a combination of madrigal and rock that somehow comes out just right (the lady behind me kept on muttering that it should have been more, uh, well, more Elizabethan). A fun evening for those who have a nostalgia for the old time Sex. Something old, something new. . From Chaucer to Promises, Promises is not as far as you would think. Promises, aS you know, is the Neil Simon adaptation of The Apartment and like everything that Simon (and David Mer. rick) touch, it is good: funny, fast. paced, professional, with whatever magic it is that turns a routine musical into something special. The star, Jerry Orbach, who made his first hit in Bruce. Jay Friedman’s over-rated and truly vulgar Scuba Duba of a season back, is in his element here, a tall, diffident young man with pleasant voice and – marvelous stage presence. He’s the shy junior executive whose apartment is used on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights by the gentlemen who | eat in the Executive Dining Room, to which he aspires. His girl is also Mr. Sheldrake’s Thursday night companion. It has several better than average songs, “Promises, Promises” and ‘“T’ll Never Fall in Love Again” among them, and a Christmas night scene at Clancy’s Lounge, in which the lonely of the city have congregated, that’s a 28-carat musical comedy gem. In it you meet Marion Mercer, and if you can fault Merrick and Simon at all, it is that they don’t keep Miss Mercer on stage all the time. (You may remember her as Little Mary Sunshine some years back.) In Promises, Little Mary Sunshine has picked up some sophistication and is in fact a bit over the hill. She’s a divorcée looking for a pickup. Suddenly she’s stage center and you are bedazzled by her large blondness and a wide-eyed smile that Con Edison should harness. Everything about the way she is turned out is just a little, well, too much. But you can’t put your finger on it until she turns to our hero and, twirling around in front of him,
asks, all little-girl excitement: “Do you like my coat?—It’s owl.” (She has since won a Tony for the best musical comedy supporting actress of the year.) All in all about the best thing of this sort to come along since Robert Morse showed us how to succeed in business without really trying. W HICH BRINGS US to 1776, the best of the lot and not really a musical. Three or four members. of the cast may get together and do a jig of sorts but the piston-driving acrobatic dances we have become accustomed to are not here. _ And also, perhaps because the songs fit the story line so well, you come out with the impression that this was a good play with music, and not the other way around. The scene is the chamber of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in the late spring and early summer of 1776. John Hancock is gavelling for order. John Adams has just made another of his long speeches (and oh, is it hot). He’s a short, belligerent, fighting-cock of a man and as he repeats: “My God, I have had this Congress,” the delegates jump to their feet to sing: “Sit down John. Sit down John. For Godsakes, John sit down.” The Congress, one can tell, has had it with John. It is agreed that a draft declaration of independence shall be written. But who shall do it? In an amusing Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean routine, John Adams rules himself out (“If Ido it, they’ll run their quill pens through it”). Adams suggests that Roger Sherman of Connecticut write it since “you were never obnoxious like me.” “But Mr. Adams, Mr. Adams,” Sherman replies excusing himself on many grounds and concluding: I can’t write with style or proper etiquette I’m just a simple cobbler from Connecticut. They settle on young Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Then comes the real crisis. It has been agreed that the vote on independence must be unanimous. _ But the Southern delegates will not accept the clause outlawing slavery which Adams insists must be retained. He is finally prevailed upon to drop it and the voting starts. Caesar Rodney, dying of cancer, is ‘Summoned by Adams and rides back to Philadelphia from Delaware to swing MS state’s delegation. Now only Pennsylvania is in doubt with Franklin for independence, John Dickinson against, and James Wilson veering toward Dickinson. At the final moment Wilson votes aye, terrified that he will go down in history as the man who torpedoed independence. And in the final great scene, the Trumbull portrait come to life, John Hancock calls the roll of states and the delegates of the Continental Congress step forward to sign for independence. eae A good evening all in all with first-rate performances by William Daniels as John Adams, Howard da Silva as Benjamin Franklin and Virginia Vestoff as Abigail Adams—all the better an evening for the knowledge that Sherman Edwards, who wrote the book and lyrics and whose idea it was, originally researched the story in depth. Much of the dialogue is faithfully reproduced from the congressional records of the period. A Broadway which expends more . and more of its efforts on tawdrier and tawdrier themes can still, it seems, thrill to one of the finest stories of all time, the birth of our nation.
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