Word: shows
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...consistently the most moving, is Julie Woods as Synthia. Voted most popular, Synthia is a cool, blunt observer; she's the one you used to turn to when closer friends became close and you needed some perspective on the emotional carnage. She, more than anyone else in the show, makes her stereotype a person. With an extraordinarily strong voice and a very smooth, sarcastic style, Woods escapes the limits of the revue form and forces us to share the events of her days from her unhappy first brush with sex (described in the song "Getting Home") to her careful analysis...
Throughout the first act, tight writing and capable acting hide the problems that became increasingly annoying as the show winds its way to its final burst of nervous optimism. Blocking problems, which seem minor at first, keep recurring. Too often what passes for choreography becomes simply two pairs facing each other as the featured character prances in between. Every now and then, all five actresses line up at the edge of the stage, choir-style, and start singing. They're singing quite nicely, to be sure, but the show loses its dramatic force when the players only produce the theatrical...
...cracked up to be, Rody's bizarre comments on her inability to make commitments--all ring false. When each character comes before us and claims that she has been totalled in some very personal way we come up against the bottom line that the people in this show are not people but classes of people. Their crises are simply too individual (devastatingly so) to work, and when sung, they sound like trite attempts to seem meaningful...
...show's end, this musical tries to end happily. From some hidden reserve of strength each actress, albeit somewhat tentatively, decides that she has the power to start from scratch one more time. And if the shift from mental shambles to self-conscious self-respect is a little abrupt, the energy of the company makes up for the inconsistency. Simply: the actresses and musicians in Children are very, very good and they overcome to a large degree the mediocre aspects of the production. Though the show has its share of problems, it still stands out as one of the best...
...bomb threat at the Hasty Pudding club early Sunday morning abruptly ended a large party given by members of this year's Hasty Pudding show...