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DRAMA. The only survivors are the Pulitzer Prizewinning idyl, All the Way Home; A Far Country, which might also be titled Young Dr. Freud; and A Taste of Honey, a gentle treatment of some bitter episodes. All are worthwhile, plus, of course, last season's The Miracle Worker, superb even without the original cast, for anyone who has not yet seen it.
COMEDY. Jean Kerr's Mary, Mary is a hilarious must, with lonesco's Rhinoceros a provocative near-must. Come Blow Your Horn recommended for fanciers of Jewish family humor. An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May recommended for everyone, at least once but preferably twice.
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 an excessively corny mixture of Irish sass and sentiment. As for Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, it is a national monument made of sugar, and should appeal to anyone who likes monuments, sugar or 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. The classics are represented by a vivid and remarkably durable Hedda Gabler, with Anne Meacham doing Ibsen to the hilt. Also recommended: Under Milk Wood, a fine performance of Dylan Thomas' ribald and rueful elegy to a little Welsh town; a City Center revival of Rodgers & Hart's raffish and memorable Pal Joey.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Sumer: The Dawn of Art, by André Parrot. A handsome display of bookmaking devoted to some of the earliest art works fashioned by civilized man. Under the general editorship of André Malraux, Sumer is the first of some 40 volumes that promise to reduce the celebrated "Museum Without Walls" to paper.
At Fever Pitch, by David Caute. As ineffectual Britons drop another position of empire, cynical black Africans claw at each other for the pieces in this searing first novel that explores, rather than exploits, the headlines.
The Brothers M, by Tom Stacey. Another disturbing African novel about an oddly matched pair of students, McNair (white) and Mukasa (black), and a journey that turns them into Cain and Abel.
The Complete Poems of Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven, and Poems, by George Seferis, translated by Rex Warner. The first book-length chance U.S. readers have had to become acquainted with the two greatest poets of 20th century Greece and with their timely and timeless sense of the past.