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THE HOMECOMING is the winner of the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award as the Best Play of the Year. Harold Pinter's latest drama is characteristically spare, laconic and mysterious as it examines a family reunion more sadistic than sentimental.
BLACK COMEDY is the better half of two one-acters by British Playwright Peter Shaffer, provoking laughter by the sight of characters pretending that they are in the dark in a sculptor's studio when the lights blow out. The curtain raiser, White Lies, evokes only boredom.
CABARET, voted the Tony and Drama Critics' Circle awards as Best Musical, mounts a molehill of a book on a mountain of a production. Joel Grey is pluperfect as the degenerate M.C. of the Kit Kat Klub in the degenerating Berlin of the 1930s.
DON'T DRINK THE WATER is a series of fast gag lines and chuckles by Comedian Woody Allen, flimsily framed on the misadventures of an American family behind the Iron Curtain.
HALLELUJAH, BABY! is nothing, baby, except a vehicle for Singer Leslie Uggams to show her wares and wiles.
I DO! I DO! Mary Martin and Robert Preston are a team de force and the main attraction of this musical version of The Fourposter.
THE APPLE TREE is a musical potpourri. Mike Nichols directs and Barbara Harris stars in three playlets based on stories by Mark Twain, Frank Stockton and Jules Feiffer.
ILLYA, DARLING brings Melina Mercouri to Broadway to re-create the role of the Piraeus prostitute of Never On Sunday. Big, brassy and sometimes boring.
THE STAR-SPANGLED GIRL is Doc Simon's latest and least amusing comedy. Tony Perkins and Paul Sand play professional kooks whose male stronghold is upset by a determined square (Sheilah Wells).
Holdovers from last season include smash musicals—Fiddler on the Roof, Hello, Dolly!, Marne, and Man of La Man-cna—pius one comedy, the Gallic sex farce, Cactus Flower.
MUSIC
In the U.S., as in Europe, music festivals have become summertime Pied Pipers, luring willing audiences to performances of major orchestras and leading artists in the informal ambiance of tents and sheds, far from metropolitan areas:
MARLBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL, Vt., under the direction of Pianist Rudolf Serkin, presents weekend programs of chamber music until Aug. 20. Pianist Ruth Laredo and Violinist Jaime Laredo, Pianist Marilyn
Neeley and Composer-Pianist Leon Kirchner are among the performers.
DARTMOUTH CONGREGATION OF THE ARTS, Hanover, N.H., offers symphony concerts Sunday evenings and chamber ensemble concerts Wednesday evenings. A final concert will be given Saturday, Aug. 19. German Composer Hans Werner Henze will lecture and conduct until July 30; Aaron Copland will be on hand Aug. 7-19.
TANGLEWOOD, Lenox, Mass. On Aug. 5, Erich Leinsdorf conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Fidelia (1805 score), Beethoven's only opera, with German Soprano Hanne-Lore Kuhse singing the lead. The Boston Pops performs Aug. 8; Aug. 17 is "Tanglewood on Parade," with vocal, orchestral and chamber-music concerts by members of the Berkshire Music Center. Verdi's Requiem will be given Aug. 19. Chamber-music concerts are on Tuesdays through Aug. 15.