Word: melba
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...distinguished men in white tie and tails as they passed through the chilly Australian winter night into Her Majesty's Theater. The glittering audience that had paid an Australian record top of $23.50 for a seat were treated to the city's finest opera performance since Nellie Melba returned to her native shores...
...heroine of the title story is Melba Toast, "the skinniest stripper in America." Blonde and randy, Melba wears the longest fake eyelashes in New York and the tightest clothes. Aging millionaires delight in lending her their Cadillacs and shower her with $100 bills. Melba is a direct descendant of Lorelei Lee in Anita Loos's 1925 bestseller, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and, like Lorelei, has a mousy girl friend to come along on double dates...
...long as the action is confined to Madcap Melba charming a cop out of giving her a parking ticket, or a gangster into surrendering a restaurant phone, the story is readable enough and lively. But Rona Jaffe intends more. The mousy girl friend is in analysis and given to morose dissections of her emotions, ranging from jealousy of Melba to frustration about the men who get away. She has a strange preoccupation with necrophilia. When one romance collapses, the mousy girl laments that "social graces are dead, shyness is dead, chivalry is dead, game playing is dead, necking is dead...
...aging Vera Simpson, in her progress into and out of a hopeless love affair. Karen Thorsell as Linda makes the most of the least individual character in the play, and Mara Lynn brings a wonderful, brassy professionalism to the role of Fladys Bumps. Minor parts, especially Renee Taylor's Melba, are well done. Both the music and the choreography seem just right, although at times the orchestra overpowers the singers...
...lesser principals were also consistently delightful. Charon Lee Cohen acted the part of Linda, Joey's girl, with pert assurance, and sang with engaging naivote. Laurie Could performed the role of Melba, the demon girl journalist, with the sort of fire and ice that has made her well-known to Harvard audiences. Andy Hiken, as the ncredible Ludlow Lowell, cavorted in the proper Runyonesque manner...