Word: capp
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There is no excuse to review The World of Li'l Abner. As John Steinbeck says in his introduction, "It is my claim that Capp is probably the greatest contemporary writer." Everybody who has followed Li'l Abner through the years knows this, and the rest don't deserve to. So the idea of an introductory volume is inherently ridiculous...
...Abner (based on Al Capp's characters ; book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank; music by Gene de Paul; lyrics by Johnny Mercer) sometimes gloriously explodes, sometimes damply splutters, as a big Broadway show. Suddenly, with something fine and deafening from the orchestra, suddenly with something fine and floor-shaking from the chorus, Al Capp's comic-strip community bounces to life. At other times, behind musicomedy goggles, Capp's satiric eye notes and needles skulduggery, stupidity, conformity. But there are numerous occasions when the Capp menagerie, let out of their neat newspaper cages, noisily lose their...
Happily, something extra-and even, in Michael Kidd's case, extra-special-is sometimes supplied. If the Dogpatchers can be dull when they walk, they are dazzling when they run. Choreographer Kidd's Sadie Hawkins Day ballet is a wonderful matrimonial chase in which Al Capp's womenfolk become amorous Keystone Cops. In the Visigothic descent of the Dogpatchers on General Bullmoose's formal ball, Kidd has created one of the memorable shambles scenes in Broadway history. And for the show's rousingest music, Jubilation T. Cornpone, Kidd has made a packed stageful of bodies...
Backed by the gay, mobile scenery of W. and J. Eckert, dressed in appropriate costumes by Alvin Colt, and directed by the skilled Mr. Kidd, the actors manage, all in all, to keep up the flavor and reputation of Al Capp's brainless but enjoyable world...
...Lillian (The Little Foxes) Hellman, Conductor-Composer Leonard Bernstein and Poet Richard Wil bur. There are also such suggestions of enchanting evenings as Ethel Merman in Happy Hunting, with a book by Life With Father's Howard Lindsay-Russel Grouse; Li'l Abner, based on Al Capp's comic strip, with songs by Johnny Mercer; Pay the Piper by George (Damn Yankees, The Pa jama Game) Abbott, based on Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie. Three other musicals will star such topnotch musicomedy personalities as Nancy Walker, Judy Holliday, Bert Lahr...