Word: verdon
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Redhead (book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, Sidney Sheldon and David Shaw; music by Albert Hague; lyrics by Miss Fields) puts musicomedy's million-dollar baby Gwen Verdon in a five-and-ten-cent storehouse of old theatrical gewgaws. The proof of her impishly awesome talent is not that she stops the show, which she does, but that she starts it-and sometimes startles it-into an amusing show of life...
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...
...Verdon moments worth counting are few, but one fine one is a witty chorus number called The Uncle Sam Rag, parodying a sedately British version of U.S. ragtime. As Essie's muscular true love, Richard Kiley is good in voice and virile in manner. The lackluster score sounds like eight notes in search of a composer, and the book should be returned to the moths from which it was borrowed. But Redhead's flaws are not in its star...
Redhead, a musical now being tuned up in Philadelphia for high-kicking Dancer Gwen (Damn Yankees) Verdon, is described by Lyricist Dorothy Fields: "This is a happy show. It does absolutely nothing for the theater." Translation: a likely Broadway hit (opening Feb. 5), with advance sales already past $1,000,000. The story: something about a dreamy London chick (Verdon), working in a turn-of-the-century waxworks, who gets tied up with a U.S. vaudeville strong man. In Washington, the Daily News's Critic Tom Donnelly called Redhead "a mad blend of Agatha Christie and Mack Sennett...
Damn Yankees. The year's best musical-though certainly not a great one; directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen, starring Gwen Verdon (TIME, Sept...