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With several shows having moved lock and barrel to stock country, the survivors are headed by Little Mary Sunshine, a boffo operetta satirizing the Kern-y, Frimlous past; The Connection, a pad full of hipsters seeking to prove that the opiate of the people is heroin after all; and a skillfully acted double bill of disenchantment: Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, in which a beaten and lonely ex-writer poignantly and often amusingly grovels in his past, paired with Edward Albee's Zoo Story, in which a desperately lonely beatnik attempts the hopeless, tragicomic feat of making human contact with a square.
Straw Hat
Ogunquit, Me., Playhouse: a new deal for Sunrise at Campobello with Howard Keel.
Dennis, Mass., Cape Playhouse: Golden Fleecing gilded by Dick Shawn.
Ivoryton, Conn., Playhouse: Dana Andrews and Gerry Jedd at loose ends in Two for the Seesaw.
Stratford, Conn.: Twelfth Night, The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra with stars including Katharine Hepburn, Robert Ryan, and Morris Carnovsky.
Bayville, L.I., North Shore Playhouse:
Toni Arden plumps for Wintergreen in Of Thee I Sing.
Traverse City, Mich., Cherry County Playhouse: Noel Coward's Present Laughter with Reginald Gardiner.
Hillside, III., Melody Top Theater: Damn Yankees with Shelley Berman.
Danville, Ky., Pioneer Playhouse: Waiting for the Bluebird, a pre-Broadway try-out of a new romantic drama.
Ashland, Ore.: Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Richard II and Taming of the Shrew.
Laguna, Calif., Playhouse: The Boy Friend.
Stratford, Ont.: King John, Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet with Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer.
BOOKS
Best Reading The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis. The final novel by the author of Zorba the Greek: a searing, soaring, shocking "biography" depicting Jesus less as God than as man, agonizingly torn between flesh and spirit.
Captain Cat, by Robert Holles. The social rise and moral downfall of a precociously cynical 15-year-old in the British army, described in authentic Teddy talk.
Lament for a City, by Henry Beetle Hough. A bitter novel by an aging New England editor illustrating that the soul of a town is its newspaper, and that both can be sold down the Styx.
Dictionary of American Slang, by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner. A handy thesaurus of American as she is spoke, from amscray to zuch.
The Cheerful Day, by Nan Fairbrother. A London doctor's wife gracefully comments on bringing up father and two sons.
Twentieth Century Parody, edited by Burling Lowrey. An entertaining anthology in which authors from Chekhov to Kerouac get the mime of their life by some old hands at the sport, from Max Beerbohm to S. J. Perelman.
Collected Poems, by Lawrence Durrell. Expert and evocative, if too often baffling, verse by the author of the acclaimed Alexandria tetralogy.
Mani, by Patrick Leigh Fermor. A fascinating picture of Peloponnesian barrens, where Homeric mythology and bloody clan warfare are a part of the harsh everyday life.
When the Kissing Had to Stop, by Constantine FitzGibbon. A chilling, Orwell-done account of the day the Iron Curtain clanked down around Britain because of the people's moral disarmament.