◆ SpookStack

MARCH 8, 1948 ‘THEATER: The Hilarious War Aairrioucu Ir is improbable that the last war will go down in history as the most amusing evént of the century, Joshua Logan and Thomas Heggen, authors of “Mister Roberts,” have cer- tainly used it as a basis for one of the funniest plays ever seen on the Amer- ican stage. Taking the frail and pleas-. ant little string of stories by Heggen as a starting point, they have shaped the material with a canny professional- ism that approaches magic, into a roar- ing, full-fleshed play which leaves the - audience limp, exhausted with laughter ~ and profoundly satisfied. After the first five minutes of the performance, a-wonderful glow of an- ticipation settles on the spectator—a glow that comes from the realization that for this one night at least, the © people responsible for your entertain- “ ment.can do no wrong. There is the — intoxicating feeling that everybody con- - nected with “Mister Roberts” is at the very peak of his creative tide. If one person can be singled out for praise, it must be Joshua Logan, who, aside from aiding in the writing, directed the work with shrewdness, vitality and humor. He has obtained shining per- formances from veteran actors who are - better in this than they ever have been, and he jhas made a host of youthful “newcomers play as though they had been on the stage steadily since 1900. ' The scenes, whirling through Jo Mielziner’s ingenious and authentic representation of the Navy Cargo Ship, AK 601, are loud, lowdown, slapstick, wistful, bitter, sentimental—it is all one to Logan. He handles each of them with the same sense of justice to- its material, with boundless variety, with a strict observance of the proper limits of the character, and with a seemingly inexhaustible gusto. Point of focus, Henry Fonda as Mister Roberts proves how bitterly the theater has suffered by losing its best actors to the films. He has a most dif- ficult assignment: quiet in the midst of an almost continual riot, serious in “stage.” 29 a thunderstorm of comedy. He has to center and concentrate the attention of the audience upon himself or have the play lose itself in a series of discon- nected gags. He does it by the use of a technique that is difficult to describe. He merely is absolutely real, and by that truthfulness he makes a simple grin, a weary lift of the shoulder, the flat and honest reading of an ordinary line, events of. great dramatic impor- tance upon the crowded and uproarious As the bed-loving Ensign Pulver, David Wayne, as nimble and artful an actor as we have around, paints a picture of a beautifully artless, naive, hero-worshiping boy that is ee funny and, at the end—when it J be-gently touching. William Harrigan, the absurd’ and monstrous captain of the ship, the enemy of every man aboard, the foe of all brotherhood and love, conducts his cranky feud with the crew. with ‘fasping integrity, his narrow, brooding virulence a perfect foil for the chaotic |, humors of the young men under his command, , Robert Keith, soaked in fruit juice and medicinal alcohol, gives his best performance to date. He is the ship’s doctor—cynical, lounging, the invinci- ble, irreverent civilian caught imper- manently in the backwash of a war. A delicious affront to Annapolis and the American Medical Association, he adds the exact, necessary touch of shore-based acid to the seething dish. The enlisted men of the crew make a mass effect upon the’ spectator. In- | § dividually, perhaps, they are slighted, but the total impression is one of vitality and comic reality. You would not know any one of them if you met him at a bar, but you feel perfectly certain that as a group they could sail any vessel (cargo) anywhere and that the Navy would approve. They chip paint, stare through binoculars at a nurses’ shower room, and wear HAYDN: String **A work so- extraordinary in its | penetration, so philosophical in its ap- proach and so poetic in its execution that no review can even hope to do more than suggest its remark- able qualities and homely merits. Crankshaw has not written just another book on Russia... . “Here' is advanced a co- herent and intellectual doc- _trine which explains not _ only the enigma of Russia, ‘but the greater enigma which that involves—why we react to Russia as we ‘do and why Russia reacts as she does to us... . Here is sanity, reason.and logic.” —HARRISON E. SALISBURY, N. Y. Times At all booksellers $3.00 RUSSIA AND THE RUSSIANS by Edward Crankshaw . THE VIKING PRESS RECORDS ° eee JUST RECORDS eee Quartet Soclety Vol No. 1 “(pads Stati: . Op 20 N Symphony No, 100 2 Military” Waite ir). New TAGLIAVINI Album—In Shell: In Vinylite Now out: 1st istue of ‘Just Records’ "Outstanding view. Feature Article: ‘Maer * by New Record Ra B. Wemer, Reviews by H Adler, ‘enson a of Skurnick. Sub: $1 per year. Write for free copy. Records shipped to any part of the world—express collect. For that HARD-TO-FIND recording: Write, Phone or Visit LAIN MUSIC SHOP »= Nth x