Word: ballads
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Half fey, half folksy, the play is based on the Southern mountaineer (not the Old English) ballad of Barbara Allen. For love of high-stepping young Barbara (Carol Stone), a witch boy in the Great Smokies (Richard Hart) has a Conjur Woman make him human. But he can remain so, the old crone tells him, only if Barbara stays faithful to him for a year after their marriage. On the last night of the year, the community,* at last awake to the boy's origin, compels Barbara to sin. (A rape scene that the censors knocked...
...Moon. With its folk songs and dances, its revival meetings and darting witch girls, it is freaked with color, touched with strangeness. But all this adds brightness rather than body to a yarn that is never very robust, and that takes hours to re-count what the ballad tells in a moment. Nor is there much more real poetry to Dark of the Moon than there is real drama. Its folkways make pleasant enough rustic vaudeville, but they smell of Broadway. Its witches' world escapes absurdity, but falls far short of enchantment...
...Canada) was in the midst of a five-week Manhattan engagement. It was performing ballets in Diaghilev's best classical tradition. But the big novelty in Manhattan was a rowdy, corn-likkered, genuinely U.S. ballet: Frankie and Johnnie, an adaptation of a well-known U.S. folk ballad...
...that there is so much lush looking that it occasionally becomes a little overwhelming. With out the lightening touches of Mr. Cooper's bumbling tally-ho manner--so competent and sure that it is a pure joy--and the bright verve of Weill's songs--"Sing Me Not a Ballad" or "You're Far Too Near Me"--"Much Ado About Love" could very easily seem over-stuffed. Opening night there was far too much material, but there was enough expert stagecraft to notice that a new musical comedy hit is heading happily for Broadway...
...Composer Gold confesses: "I banged out the theme with one finger and we called in a professional to do the arrangement. He was the man with the education and the man who got the $5." Technically, he characterizes his work as "a beat-up, old-fashioned style, spontaneous-sounding ballad...