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SALVATION. Begat by Hair; this new musical is an aesthetically retarded child that epitomizes Modcom—the commercial exploitation of modernity without regard for dramatic art. Like other Modcom productions that peddle the youth cult, Salvation is replete with cynical simulations of innocence, freedom and dissent.
ADAPTATION—NEXT. Elaine May's Adaptation and Terrence McNally's Next are a happy combination of funny one-acters. Both plays are directed by Miss May with her usual wit and comic perception.
NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBODY is a sometimes rambling, but always absorbing study of the contemporary fabric of black-white and black-black relations.
OH! CALCUTTA! The talented authors of this "nudie review" have not come through with their promised elegant erotica—but the handsome bodies onstage help compensate for the disappointment.
TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK. An adroit cast presents moving readings and dramatizations from the works of the late Lorraine Hansberry.
DAMES AT SEA is a delightful parody of the movie musicals of the 1930s, complete with all the frenetic dance routines and a classic cliche: the naive young girl who survives the Broadway jungle to tap her way to stardom.
CINEMA
THE GYPSY MOTHS. Superficially a film about skydiving, The Gypsy Moths is in fact another investigation by Director John Frankenheimer into the nature and quality of courage. The story seems too slender and deliberate to bear its weight of rather sophomoric philosophy.
TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN. Woody Allen appears as a crook in this crazy crime flick (which he also directed and coauthored) that comes on like gangbusters.
MEDIUM COOL is an angry essay, in fictive documentary form, on American society in crisis. Writer-Director-Photographer Haskell Wexler uses the framework of a TV cameraman's experiences during last summer's Chicago convention to render the year's most impassioned and impressive film.
THE WILD BUNCH. The place is the Tex-Mex border, around the turn of the century, where a group of freebooting bandits try to scrounge a living out of a life that is fast becoming obsolete. Director Sam Peckinpah explores this violent world with hard-edged poetry and a sense of visual splendor that establishes him as one of the best American film makers.
STAIRCASE. There are two good reasons to see this film version of Charles Dyer's play, and they are Richard Burton and Rex Harrison. Portraying a bickering, desperate homosexual couple on the brink of old age, both men turn in their best screen performances in years.
ALICE'S RESTAURANT. Arthur Penn has turned Arlo Outline's jaunty talking blues hit of a couple of years back into a melancholy epitaph for an entire way of life. It is hard to imagine a more beautiful film than this—or a sadder one.
TRUE GRIT. At 62, John Wayne is still riding tall in the saddle. Playing a hard-drinking but softhearted lawman in this cornball western comedy, Wayne proves that his nickname, "The Duke," has never been more apt.