(2 of 4)
THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE. William Saroyan's play was first performed 30 years ago and is now revived with care, affection and excellence by the Lincoln Center Repertory Company. To the audience of today the colorful characters in Nick's Saloon seem like a commune of dropouts, and Saroyan may qualify as the first articulate hippie.
JIMMY is a $900,000 anachronism, a Hollywood notion (courtesy of Jack L. Warner) of what a Broadway musical is like, drearily familiar from countless Hollywood films of Broadway musicals. It takes consummate ineptitude to make Jimmy Walker dull and his mistress, Betty Compton, even duller.
BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE. No one expects a new comic writer to be another Neil Simon or Jean Kerr. But one does expect him to be funny and to be himself. Leonard Gershe is only sporadically funny and never uniquely himself. Eileen Heckart, playing the mother of a blind young man who seeks independence by moving into his own apartment, can groan and pun-like a baritone sax—and delivers her lines almost as if Gershe had delivered the goods.
INDIANS. Playwright Arthur Kopit has joined the mea culpa crew with this play, which argues that Americans were once beastly to the redskins—hardly a startling bit of information. The format is that of a Buffalo Bill Wild West show alternating with somber accounts of the humiliation and decimation of the Indians, but the segments never seem to gain any harmony of mood or purpose.
THREE MEN ON A HORSE. George Abbott directs a revival of the 1935 comedy about a composer of greeting-card verses (Jack Gilford) who wiles away his commuting hours by hunch-picking horses with uncanny clairvoyance. The cast is superb, and the entire production is polished to a high gloss.
THE FRONT PAGE. Robert Ryan plays Walter Burns, the tough managing editor of the Chicago Examiner, and Bert Convy plays Hildy Johnson, his top reporter, in this revival of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur saga of newspapering in the 1920s. The play has a cornball period flavor that adds to the enjoyment.
Off Broadway
FORTUNE AND MEN'S EYES, by Canadian Playwright John Herbert, was, when originally presented in 1967, a scorching indictment of the prison system, with its brutal guards and tyrannizing homosexual inmates. As restaged by Sal Mineo, complete with the added attractions of blood, gore, a nude rape scene and an almost totally inept cast, it is nothing more than a carefully placed kick in the groin.
ADAPTATION-NEXT. Elaine May's Adaptation and Terrence McNally's Next are a happy combination of funny and clever one-acters. Both plays are directed by Miss May with her usual wit and comic perception.
CINEMA
GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS. Despite the talent and voice of Petula Clark, this adaptation of James Hilton's classic falls flat as a musical. But Peter O'Toole, as the beloved Mr. Chipping, gives one of the most subtle performances of his career.
THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA. Anthony Quinn as the roistering, boozy Bombolini, and Anna Magnani as his unrelentingly strong-willed wife, Rosa, make a powerful combination.
ALICE'S RESTAURANT. Starting with Arlo Guthrie's hit song of a couple of years ago, Director Arthur Penn develops an amusing yet tragic view of youth and a way of life.