Theater: Epiphany in a Dance Hall

Marathon '33, written and directed by June Havoc, is liberally laced with music and dance, yet it is not a musical. It is housed in a Broadway playhouse, but it is not a play. It is more nearly a spectacle—the kind that people have in mind when they talk of "making a spectacle of oneself," funny yet frightening, poignant, pitiable and a little tawdry. It follows no plot, but simply coils, sometimes slackly, sometimes snugly, around an event: a dance marathon. But it clings to an abiding vision that life is a grueling test, rather like 3,000 hours on a dance...