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A Night in Spain. Billed in the provinces as "A Tabasconian Extravaganza, Torrid as the Calorific Passion of Colorful Castile" with "Seventy Stunning, Seductive, Saltatorial Senoritas," this revue was gleefully flayed by provincial critics. But three months of wandering, trimming and revision have turned it into a saturnalia as amusing as it is brash. Ted Healy, Phil Baker and Stanley Rogers crack immoderatly wise. Cortez & Peggy, the Hoffman and Foster Girls and the Trainor Brothers have nervous, agile feet. Dancer Helba Huara, imported from Spain as atmosphere, insinuates her vivid self throughout the program. Spanish Art Theatre (in repertory). To the non-linguist who fishes only an occasional lilting "manana" out of the lulling flow of Spanish, charming, piquant Catalina Barcena is the prize catch of these repertory evenings. Disarmed by her freshness and simplicity, critics mentioned Pauline Lord, June Walker, Ruth Gordon and the young Maude Adams in their fumblings for comparison. Against scenery that is sometimes like thick brown slices of gingerbread, sometimes mere impromptu impressionism, she acts with casual spontaneity.
The Plays: Shaw, Shakespeare and Ibsen are occasional intruders among this hispanic company. But from prolific Martinez Sierra, founder and director of the Spanish Art Theatre, came most of its repertory. For his U. S. premiere, which the Spanish Ambassador journeyed up from Washington to see, he selected a bright-hued sequence of lyric love called The Road to Happiness, This road wound among gypsy tents and Spanish villages leading a peasant girl apparently nowhere but teaching her a lot about life on the way. It was, as one writer wrote, "simply like Pippa passing the night." Another Sierra play, The Romantic Young Lady, indoor comedy, was better understood by Manhattanites, having been produced in translation last year at the Neighborhood Play house.