Word: druten
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...costumes were designed by Irene Sharaff and the sets by Jo Mielziner. The costumes are lavish and imaginative; the sets are lavish. Mr. Mielziner's forte is not musical comedy, or even "musical play." "The King and I" is a large production, John Van Druten's direction is smooth, and the performances are all good. The trouble is that Rodgers and Hammerstein seem a little too reluctant to entertain their public. That is a fundamental mistake in show business. Perhaps the future will bring a change...
Bell, Book and Candle. Britain's Lilli Palmer and Rex Harrison, consistently bright in John van Druten's reasonably bright comedy about a modern witch (TIME...
...show's distinguished ancestry includes Kathryn Forbes's bestselling novel, Mama's Bank Account, John van Druten's Broadway hit, I Remember Mama, and the movie based on the play. But Producer Irwin and Director Ralph Nelson have not borrowed a single episode from the play and novel. They prefer to concentrate on the basic characters, the locale (San Francisco) and the period (early 1900s). Since the program started, there has been only one major cast change. A spare kinescope (television recording), kept handy in case one of the principals should be taken ill, has never...
Bell, Book and Candle (by John van Druten; produced by Irene Mayer Selznick) comes up with a bright comedy idea and, for perhaps better than half the evening, with a bright comedy. Playwright van Druten has assumed not only that there are modern-day witches but that they can be modish and highly efficient, and that one of them is attractive enough to ensnare a bright Manhattan publisher. When the publisher discovers she is a witch, he walks out on her-only for her to discover she is now a woman. Hoist on her own broomstick, she has fallen...
...Druten perfectly engineers the leap into fantasy. With their shop talk and trade secrets, his witches and warlocks are as conceivable as they are entertaining, and his heroine, both before & after, makes a lively minx. Gradually, however, the social and business life of witches is dulled by repetition; eventually the odd charm of boy-meets-witch slumps into the old hat of boy-finds-girl. Bell, Book and Candle lacks the resourceful twists that kept a fantasy like Blithe Spirit gay to the end; it moves in the opposite-and less rewarding-direction of a fantasy like Lady into...