Word: newley
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Roar of the Greasepaint-the Smell of the Crowd brings back Anthony Newley, the versatile book-song-mime-and-dance man of Stop the World, to belabor his favorite subject -what a raw deal the Little Man gets in this worst of all possible worlds. This time, Newley's ubiquitous underdog is called Cocky instead of Littlechap, though the aptest name for him would be Poppycocky...
Under a pretentiously artsy façade, Newley slams the audience with a symbol as if it were a clown's pig bladder. Cocky is pitted against an autocratic upper-class fat cat in a dented top hat named Sir (Cyril Ritchard). Sir makes the rules for the Game of Life, which is played rather like circular hopscotch on a huge disk at stage center. Any time Cocky manages two jumps forward, he is forced to go three jumps or more backward. Arbitrary? Unreasonable? One understands-the game is hopelessly rigged...
...Newley's cry, clown, cry songs provide errant moments of appeal, most notably a tuneful lament called Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me). A floppy band of little girls clad like the urchins in Oliver! scamper about the ramplike setting to create illusions of dance numbers. One grownup girl (Joyce Jillson) lusciously blessed with beauty distracts the playgoer briefly from the show's glacial pace and Sir's ultimate comedownance...
...Newley has obviously modeled himself on Charlie Chaplin, but he loves the master less than the master's cloak, and he wears it with a rueful difference. Where Chaplin was earthy, Newley is smirkingly vulgar. Chaplin was a prisoner of life who sang in his chains; Newley is a resentful slave of the class system who cries in his pint of bitters. Chaplin's Little Tramp was a tattered knight of the open road, dueling his foes with his wits and a twirling cane. Newley's Oh-So-Little Man, windily inflated with his rights...
...stage has often been used as a soapbox, but Newley's brand of social protest is stale, sour and weary. Since the same message would cost nothing on a street corner, it takes a certain amount of bogus adornment and gall to charge $9.60 for it in the theater. Greasepaint has plenty of both...