Theater: Stop the World

When bigger bombs are dropped, Broadway will drop them. Dear World is almost in the megaton class (it cost $750,000), and the stage at the Mark Hellinger Theater is a smoldering rubble of tedium.

Plays converted into musicals have a high disaster ratio. In some instances, the plays themselves could not have been successfully revived. The Madwoman of Chaillot, from which Dear World has been rather conscientiously adapted, is 25 years old, and it doesn't take a play doctor to see that rigor mortis has set in.

The Jean Giraudoux original is one of those typical French morality plays cleverly garnished and disguised...

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