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THE KNACK is a fantastically droll British bedroom farce played out in an all-but-bare room. If one can imagine three perplexed and, at times, almost pathetic Marx Brothers chasing a plump country girl, with the cry of "Rape!" punctuating the air like "Tallyho!", one gets a glimmer of Playwright Ann Jellicoe's comic instincts.
DUTCHMAN. A sex-teaser white girl lures and then tongue-lashes a sedate Negro in a subway car until he turns on her with a venomous tirade of racial hate. Playwright LeRoi Jones aims to terrify, and between stations he succeeds.
THE TROJAN WOMEN. This tragic masterpiece by Euripides is 2,400 years old. but in its current superb production, it is the most profoundly alive drama to be found in New York.
RECORDS
Pop IPs
The longest-lived popular recordings today are of Broadway musicals. My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and Camelot have sold over a million copies each and are still buyers' favorites. Two original-cast albums of current shows may join these golden few. having displaced the Beatles this month as top sellers:
HELLO, DOLLY! (RCA Victor). Almost everyone who can carry a tune has recorded Jerry Herman's title song, but it sounds mellowest and best here where it came from. Eileen Brennan makes Ribbons Down My Back send shivers. However, it is the meddling matchmaker. Carol Channing. all brass and honey, who firmly takes over the proceedings when she announces, / Put My Hand In, and stays zanily in charge till she gurgles So Long, Dearie.
FUNNY GIRL (Capitol) is actually a fourth album triumph for Barbra Streisand. She sings nearly all the Jule Slyne-Bob Merrill songs, from the ragtime Cornet Man and up-tempo Don't Rain on My Parade to the ballads that are a fever chart of her love affair, from its first tender moments (People) to the dawn of doubt (Who Are You Now?). Danny Meehan is a lively musical addition as a vaudeville hoofer, but Sydney Chaplin sounds as if he needs to be wound up.
Other tops in the singing-pop field:
BEWITCHED (Kapp). There is no escaping Jack Jones these days on TV and bestselling record charts. Son of Musical Comedy Star Allan Jones, Jack is longer on looks than on personality, but his singing has a splash of Sinatra in it and an appeal to two generations, if not three. Here is something old, Dad's song, Rosalie, and something new, It Only Takes a Moment.
LADY IN THE DARK (RCA Victor). A reissue of Kurt Weill's songs from the classic musical psychodrama of 1941. The orchestral arrangements sound dated, and even in her prime (eleven years before her death) Gertrude Lawrence had the usual uncertain wobble in her voice, but her Saga of Jenny is nevertheless galvanic, and My Ship still haunting.
CATERINA VALENTE (London) sings one of the spate of new recordings glorifying the World's Fair City. Happen to Like New York. Caterina, who was born in Paris and can sing in eleven languages, has just the right cosmopolitan shimmer in her voice to make the compliment mean something, and she refreshes songs like Take the A" Train and Lullaby of Broadway.