Word: comden
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Sentimentality in Reverse. "The bitch-goddess, success" was a phrase coined by William James. What Mary Orr, who penned the original story, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who scripted the film, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who wrote the book for Applause, have done is to reverse James and produce a clever little parable on the success goddess-bitchiness. It may be clever, but it is far from valid. Cynicism is sentimentality in reverse and equally untrue. Of all places, the theater, with its intense critical scrutiny, verifies the copybook maxim that success must be earned and that only merit will...
...numbing slim-wittedness of Arthur Laurents' book seems to have infected the score: the songs evaporate as they leave the orchestra pit, despite such potent tunesmiths as Composer Jule Styne or Lyricists Adolph Green and Betty Comden. Some of the dances catch fire, notably a G.I. close-order drill done with smoking speed to syncopated shouts, and in a show that is more candied than candid, Leslie Uggams and Robert Hooks perform with unblemished, infectiously likable honesty. Apart from being lovely to look at, Uggams has a shy sly smile that burgles the theater house. She can cradle...
...Town, written in 1944 by Betty Comden; Adolph Green, and Leonard Bernstein as a fancy-free and slightly before-its-time first-effort, has settled down into comfortable period-piecedom. Quincy House has revived this product from the age of Chiquita Banana and has missed little of the charm of a show about three rube sailors who fall in love with three city girls while on 24-hour leave in New York...
...final problem with On the Town is that Comden and Green teamed up to write an unnecessarily slow second act, which gets bogged down in period parody of New York night clubs. A director can help the long night-club scene by pacing it almost out of existence. But this particular director has pacing problems which result from the long scene changes; there is no way of getting around the stage waits but a little more traveling music from the orchestra would help...
...playgoer who wants to cultivate amnesia need only listen to the Jule Styne music and the lyrics of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who also undid the book. Donald Brook's costumes are deliciously droll, right for the period, and colorful as the frosting on a birthday cake. They should be saved for another show...