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Comedie Franchise. In its first U.S. visit since 1955, the 300-year-old national company alternates works by Moliere, Racine and Feydeau.
Camelot. The libretto carries only echoes of T. H. White's The Once and Future King, but the show is clearly Broadway's once and future run. With Richard Burton and Julie Andrews.
Do Re Mi. Stars Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker are wonderful, the rest of the proceedings dreary.
Rhinoceros. Avant-Gardist Eugene lonesco's nonconformist satire manages to be at once somewhat farfetched, is nevertheless exhilarating theater.
A Taste of Honey. Some of the world's misfits and misfortunes, in a sweet-and-sour series of episodes.
All the Way Home. A poignant, well-acted adaptation of James Agee's Knoxville chronicle, A Death in the Family, that retains much of the novel's poetry and power.
Becket. Fine performances by Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn give depth and body to Jean Anouilh's tart tragedy.
Irma La Douce. Saucy Elizabeth Seal is a charming chippy in a French musical that loses little in the translation.
Advise and Consent. Allen Drury's best-selling novel makes an unsubstantial but suspenseful theater piece about Washington politics.
Show Girl. A sprightly revue, enlivened by the madcap manners of Carol Channing.
An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. A potpourri of bland banter and sharp-pointed satire.
Off Broadway
The American Dream. Young Playwright Edward Albee, who sometimes sounds like an American lonesco, satirizes middle-class America.
Hedda Gabler. Anne Meacham is superb in a remarkable revival of Ibsen's classic.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Mid-Century, by John Dos Passes. The best novel from Dos Passes since his U.S.A. trilogy, possibly because he resorts to the same technique, a montage of fictional personal histories, headlines, and impressionistic real-life profiles. The villain this time is not big business but big labor.
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, by Albert Camus. The late lamented French writer had a conscience like a carpenter's level. In this book he applies it to Algeria, democracy, Christianity and totalitarianism, and his readings combine brilliance of aphorism with nobility of spirit.
In Pursuit of the English, by Doris Lessing. A comic nonfictional slice of English lowlife, with an edge of sadness. Spiv, whore, or shopgirl, Author Lessing knows them all, but she is not a shimmer, a shunner, or a sermonizer.
Abandoned, by A. L. Todd. The Arctic Circle was outer space in the late 19th century. Lieut. Greely and his 24-man team got there; but only seven returned to tell their grisly tales.
If Thine Eye Offend Thee, by Heinrich Schirmbeck. A metaphysical novel about the role of science, argued with the wildly sprayed brilliance of early Aldous Huxley.
Man's Desiring, by Menna Gallic. In her brisk, garrulous and charming fashion, Novelist Gallic has created a dogged Welsh math teacher who keeps his village innocence amid the lean fleshpots and fat sophistries of an English university.
Here Comes Pete Now, by Thomas Anderson. The New York waterfront serves as background to an oblique parable of man's groping, with Beckett and Kafka overtones.