Word: darlin
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...Darlin' Aida (music by Giuseppe Verdi; book & lyrics by Charles Friedman) shifts its scene from the Memphis, Egypt of Aida to Memphis, Tenn. in 1861. Aida, Amneris and Radames of Verdi's opera become respectively a lovely slave girl (Elaine Malbin), her imperious young mistress (Dorothy Sarnoff) and a Confederate officer (Howard Jarratt) who loves the slave girl but is engaged to her mistress. The story is a tangle of Negro uprisings, hooded night riders, beatings, and death for the lovers...
...result, though not dull, is fairly distressing. No opera better lends itself to spectacle than Aida, and thanks to Lemuel Ayers' opulent sets and costumes and a $250,000 outlay in non-Confederate money, My Darlin' Aida is often bright spectacle enough. As for the story, its bloodhound violences have more bang than the opera's rather bloodless grandiosities; but My Darlin' Aida is a mass of strident cliches, puerile dialogue and hack vulgarities. As for the score, though its glories remain, they are dented and tarnished by embarrassing lyrics, new bits of orchestration, and musicomedy...
...spoofing, Texas, Li'l Darlin' is sporadic and seldom adept. It shines brightest in Johnny Mercer's lyrics, notably about private secretaries...
...might be surmised from the title--"Texas, Li'l Darlin'"--and the foregoing commentary, the plot makes no noticeable effort to avoid the cliches apparently inherent in a Texas theme. Though I do not share in the anti-Texas feeling one hears frequently voiced, it does seem that a whole evening devoted to variations on this single theme is too much to ask of anyone. All of the other rural jokes are there, too: the Scars, Roebuck catalogue, the outhouses are good for two laughs, and so on. Several of the lines are of questionable taste, and one remark goes...
...Texas, Li'l Darlin'" is nicely costumed, has some good dancing and an energetic and talented cast. By a great deal of work some good may come of it. But as it stands now, it is considerably below the level of some of the less-successful Pudding shows, and a good deal like some of them in that it falls between two chairs. Of course, the girls are real in this...