Word: songful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Italy's muff-haired Domenico Modugno, a guitar-plunking crooner with a gypsy wail, turns out lyrics that make no sense, and he cannot read the music he composes and sings. But last year his song Volare (To Fly) was the world's biggest hit, with 7,000,000 records sold, including 2,000,000 for Decca Records in the U.S. alone. Last week Modugno, glowing in a powder-blue tuxedo, weepily twanged his latest effort, Piove (It's Raining), at the annual San Remo Song Festival, walked off with the festival prize-no cash...
Half the plot is carried forward through asides ("Had I but known this maiden's true station . . ."), and when the stage crew needs time to shift scenery, the present production throws in an irrelevant song. All in all, the revival proves that passable 19th century satire can make for delightful 20th century farce...
From the moment Trouper Verdon turns plain Essie into a glittering song-and-dance girl, Redhead stops being deadhead. Her articulate hands, toes and torso are parts of speech and her lines are more pleasing than the script's. Her body is an erotic spoof spelling sex in quotes, as she overtilts a wayward hip or dislocates an amorous shoulder; in marathon-long dances, the stage is her keyboard, and she never hits a wrong note. Under the bravura assurance lies an endearing Chaplinesque poignance. Smiles of delight cross the wistful, wide-eyed Verdon face, like sudden dawns. Eager...
Flower Drum Song. A routine but expertly guided tour, conducted by Rodgers and Hammerstein, of San Francisco's Chinatown. Among the three-star sights: Singers Miyoshi Umeki and Pat Suzuki...
...contrapuntally against this is the inner lament of the thinker, persecuted because of his mental superiority: "Why is everybody always pickin' on me?" Even the intellectual, while inwardly tortured, must maintain a stoic facade, however; and the song offers an austere ethic...