Word: kismet
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OPENED LAST NIGHT: At the Zlegfield, Charles Lederer's "Kismet", with music by Aleksandr Borodin and starring Alfred Drake, Joan Diener, Doretts Morrow, Henry Calvin, and Glenn Burris. For the benefit of theatre-goers deprived of critleal manna, the CRIMSON reprints a review of the musical as it appeared during the Boston try-out in late October. Our critic can not, of course, evaluate subscquent changes in the script or quality of the production...
Aleksandr Boredin's first musical since Prince igor hit the boards in 1890 is an entertaining show, in spite of some remarkably shoddy ingredients. Unlike igor, Kismet's big assist comes from Minsky rather than Rimsky. With a vigorous cootch dance, bare-tummied slave girls paraded "for sale or for rent," and a number of jokes like, "CAll me in the harom; I'll be lying down there," Kismet is often indistringuishable from Harem Nights at the Old Howard. Further debits are abominable lyrics ("We'll coo adien without undue ado"), a script short on humor of any kind...
...company gambols through Kismot with good-natured case. Even the gauze-pantalooned houris in the chorus seem pleasantly aware of how silly they look and make the bad moments of the show so hilariously poor that you can't complain. On the other hand, thanks primarily to 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...
...please even the most myopic in the second balcony. With comic relish, she joins Drake in the slaughter of a smutty little horror called "Oasis of Delightful Imaginings" ("The breeze that cools the dunes there has an opposite effect on the pantaloons there."). Doretta Morrow is piquant as Kismet's sole ingenue, particularly in "Stranger in Paradise," the most successful hybrid of Borodin and Tin Pan Alley...
...which permit the "Princesses of Ababu" to cavort around a palace pool obviously built in manual training class. At best, there are agreeable melodies to be ruined by the lyrics, and two lively numbers, "He's In Love" and the first act Finale. In any case, the music helps Kismet to whirl with amiable vulgarity through thirteen scenes, and the New York businessman will probably find the show a god-send for entertaining a Big Account...