(2 of 3)
Dr. B. (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Filmed in Flemington, N.J., the program documents the life and practice of a family doctor.
THEATER
On Broadway
DRAMA. The only survivors are the Pulitzer-prizewinning idyl, All the Way Home; A Far Country, more or less how young Dr. Freud discovered psychoanalysis in three easy sessions; The Best Man, Gore Vidal's breathless but depthless dramatization of electoral politics; and A Taste of Honey, which mixes tenderness and bitterness in a raffish setting. Plus last season's The Miracle Worker, superb even without the original cast.
COMEDY. Jean Kerr's Mary, Mary is not only funny but wise; lonesco's Rhinoceros is not only funny but provocative Come Blow Your Horn is a long, often amusing, Jewish family joke. An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, two people who may just possibly abolish boredom, can and should still be caught before the show closes in two weeks.
MUSICALS. On balance, Camelot has a far more engaging score than was at first conceded; with a splendid cast and sets, the troubled book is almost overcome! The most charming musical around remains Irma La Douce, the freshest Carnival! and Bye Bye Birdie and Fiorello! are both unpretentiously funny. Do Re Mi has Phil Silvers, but despite the inspired help of Nancy Walker, book and music combine to make this a lot less entertaining than Bilko reruns. Donnybrook!, another one of those hopeful musicals that believe in the magic of the exclamation point is a corny mixture of Irish sass and sentiment. As for Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, it is so sweet it hurts, but it does have Mary Martin.
Off Broadway
Jean Genet's The Blacks, a mocking kaleidoscopic allegory of race hatred, is probably the most interesting item around. Genet's other long-running offering is The Balcony, an amusing charade in which the world is seen as a vast brothel. Rising Dramatist Edward Albee, who has not yet written a full-length play, has built a reputation on lonesco-like one-acters, of which The American Dream and The Death of Bessie Smith are now on view. Also recommended: Hedda Gabler, with Anne Meacham doing Ibsen to the hilt-and Under Milk Wood, a fine performance of Dylan Thomas' ribald and rueful elegy to a little Welsh town.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Essays and Introductions, by William Butler Yeats. These are the thoughts of the early Yeats, the prophet of the Celtic Twilight. Here is the cult of beauty, the mystique of art as religion, and the strange notions that somehow fed the glories of his poetry.
Memed My Hawk, by Yashar Kemal An appealing first novel from Turkey tells the story of an Anatolian village lad who grows up to be a modern Robin Hood.
Sumer: The Dawn of Art, by Andre Parrot. A handsome display of bookmaking devoted to some of the earliest art works fashioned by civilized man.
At Fever Pitch, by David Caute. For obvious reasons, British writers are tops when it comes to describing disintegrating empires. The locale in this fine first novel is Africa.
The Brothers M, by Tom Stacey. Another novel of Africa in which a black and a white student first tightrope-walk and later trip on the color line.