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THE LOWER DEPTHS. In a crawly setting peopled by human termites, the Association of Producing Artists players feelingly capture some of the dimensions of sin, despair, death, love and grace that Maxim Gorky wrote into his turn-of-the-century classic.
THE BLOOD KNOT chokes half the life but none of the laughter, tears or bitterness out of two South African half brothers—one black, one white.
AFTER THE FALL. Making his actors enter and exit like the vagrant thoughts of memory, Playwright Arthur Miller tangles them in the web of a man's hurt and guilt.
THE TROJAN WOMEN, by Euripides, is a revelation of the power, agony and passion that exist in a classic of the past when it is conceived in terms of the present and executed at a level approaching perfection.
RECORDS
Popular Singles
No sooner did one Beatle song top the hit charts than another knocked it down. I Want to Hold Your Hand sold nearly 4,000,000 copies in three months, Can't Buy Me Love shot to just short of a million its first day, while a dozen more (Do You Want to Know a Secret, Twist and Shout) darted up the charts and jammed the air waves in the most amazing avalanche in record history.
But to separate one Beatle outburst from another, disk jockeys played and kids bought other hit 45s as well. Most of them cause adults to flee precipitously at first twang, but a few have a pleasant lilt or catchy sound. A sampling across the board:
HELLO, DOLLY! (Kapp). A grown man singing in teenland is a rare bird indeed, but Louis Armstrong comes on strong in the hit musical's title song with a growling, swinging beat for all ages.
BITS AND PIECES (Epic). The Dave Clark Five, another British export, look like the Beatles and bested them on a chart or two back home. The Five boast the Lively Tottenham Sound: hard and Mersey-less, achieved with what seems to be an arrangement for air hammers.
DON'T LET THE RAIN COME DOWN (Philips). A song as refreshing as a summer shower sung calypso-style by a new folk group (two girls, seven men) known with some justice as the Serendipity Singers.
DEAD MAN'S CURVE (Jan and Dean; Liberty) features the screeching tires of a Sting Ray and an XKE Jag set to an insistent, harmonious dirge and improved by a moral. "I found out for myself that everyone was right," intones the surviving drag racer to his doctor when he regains consciousness.
KISSIN' COUSINS (RCA Victor). Elvis sports a catalogue of 79 records now, but still seems to mean what he sells. This one is about a distant cousin who actually wasn't as distant as her mother might have wished.
THE SHOOP SHOOP SONG (Vee-Jay). Not many girl pop singers make it, but Betty Everett has a strong and agile voice and is on her way. To find out whether a boy loves you, you should "Kiss him, and squeeze him tight," she shouts. "Shoop, shoop," mutters the chorus.
JAVA (RCA Victor). Look Ma, no words. A jaunty and indelible tune artlessly tossed off by the big, bearded trumpeter Al Hirt.
FUN, FUN, FUN (Capitol). The five Beach Boys rode out the surf-singing craze and made a happy landing as bards of the hot-rods. Here they twang and yodel in celebration of a fast-cruisin' girl who's going to have fun, fun, fun, even though her Daddy took her T-Bird away.