Word: mehitabel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Shinbone Alley (book by Joe Darion & Mel Brooks; music and lyrics by George Kleinsinger & Joe Darion) celebrates Don Marquis' reasonably immortal archy and mehitabel. Supreme among literary cockroaches is the archy who typewrote free-verse memos to his newspaper-columnist "boss" by hurling himself head-downwards on the keys (though he could never manage capital letters). Gamest and gamiest of cats is the mehitabel that archy reported on, who insists that she was once Cleopatra and though bedraggled and back-alleyish now, is always a lady and toujours gai. The two friends are an easy pair to feel tender...
Shinbone Alley makes a brave try, and at intermission still has something of a chance. After that, things go rather un-brokenly downhill; and only a few times all evening-as in a charming duet, Flotsam and Jetsam, or some Eartha Kitt touches as mehitabel-is the Don Marquis strain triumphant. A few other times-as in a revue-sketch scene where mehitabel, as a dramatic-school tyro, suddenly gives the hot-jazz treatment to Shakespeare-Shinbone Alley is attractive show business. And Eartha Kitt. with her feline grace and mannered charm, is frequently mehitabelish, and at the worst gives...
...This short hepcat opera buffa is a boffola," caroled Variety in its review of archy and mehitabel. Set to jazzy, tricky but agreeable music by George (Tubby the Tuba) Kleinsinger, the hard knocks and good times of Shinbone Alley came to life last week at Manhattan's Town Hall, providing the music season's pleasantest half hour...
...even more painful than for most poets: he had to type each letter by diving headfirst from the frame of the machine to the keys (his works were all in lower case because he was unable to land simultaneously on the shift key). His bruised outpourings are mostly about mehitabel, the life-battered but life-loving cat ("toujours gai, toujours gai") who is pretty sure she is a reincarnation of Cleopatra, the hottest cat on the Nile. The libretto is somewhat bowdlerized (gone is mehitabel's running refrain of "wottheheli wotthehell"), but the original's splendid gutter lyricism...
...Manhattan production (imaginatively presented without sets or costumes by the Little Orchestra Society), Mignon Dunn, a mezzo-soprano of Dag-mar-like proportions, made a fine, feline mehitabel; diminutive Baritone Jonathan Anderson made the best-voiced cock roach in history, and a vocal quartet called the Four Heatherstones supplied bacchanalian backgrounds. This spring Columbia Records will release an archy and mehitabel album, starring Carol Channing. But Kleinsinger and Darion expect the bulk of their royalties to result from the opera fever that has broken out across the U.S. among amateur and semi-pro groups. University workshops in particular have eagerly...