Word: gusto
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Because its shortness and rapid pace pose fewer staging and acting difficulties, Trial is the better of the two productions. When left to singing the whole company is quite superb, with clear diction, much gusto and a pretty sense of how to make funny lines seem just that. Morely shines in the Judge's role (and in his patter song) while Sara-Jane Smith plays the betrothed Angelina with giddy charm. Don Fern, one of the few Trial principals who does not also sing in Pinafore, makes up for an infinitesimal voice by rascally and slick acting as the defendant...
...despite the script difficulties the acting is fine. Robert Morley as Gilbert and Maurice Evans as his partner bring a gusto and talent to their roles that almost cover up the inadequacies of what they are saying. Martyn Green, mostly singing, is the best Grossmith since Grossmith...
...Horace, pursuing high aims at high altitudes, bigamy is a mere narrow-minded epithet, and the feelings of his Wilmington wife (Martha Scott), on hearing the Philadelphia story, are to be placated by friendly words and a few flowers. Necessarily, there are bourgeois complications. Yet, as played with gusto by Burgess Meredith, Mr. Pennypacker is no less a devoted family man for having one family too many, and no less a man of principle for having principles all his own. The whole play is geared to the level of farce; but though the level is sustained, the leverage falters...
...Alfred Drake, Kismet's good moments are very enjoyable indeed. In Otis Skinner's old role of the resourceful beggar who marries off his daughter to the Caliph, drake is even more personable than he was in Kiss Me Kate. Drake is onstage almost continuously,a nd his jaunty gusto as he revels in the foolishness of the script sets the tone and pace of the whole production. With a sturdy baritone and superb diction, Drake gives his songs far better treatment than they deserve, projecting all to clearly some atrocities in the lyries, but making a number like "Gesticulate...
...difficult to single one person out of this first-rate cast, but if anyone deserves an especial credit, it is Bob Schwarz, who, besides contributing to the lyrics, played Maximilian Feek, the adman himself, with gusto, humor, and even subtlety when it was needed. Juggling the whims of ball-bearing manufacturer S.J. (does in dry dead-pan by Walter Littell) with the extra-curricular passions of Electra, his brassy mistress, played by Hugh Fortmiller, Feek is ulcered into finding a new advertising glmmick to sell ball-bearings. With the help of vice-presidents Arbuthuot, Moriarity, and Carmichel (Ed Bursk, Stove...