Fol-De-Rol

The Princeton Triangle Club is primarily a social institution whose largest purpose is to give the more talented members of Cottage Club, Cap and Gown and Tiger Inn a 3,000-mile booze bust around the country at Christmastime. Not all Triangle show boys are out exclusively for a good time, however, and it is this type which goes out into the cold world and becomes actors, singers and directors like James Stuart, Joshua Logan, Ned Wever, Frank Chapman, Phillips Holmes, Myron McCormick, Bretaigne Windust, Jose Ferrer. These have created in the Triangle Club a small but sound tradition of showmanship which the 49th annual production --Fol-De-Rol, which began its tour* in

Princeton last week--did nothing to tarnish. There are many elements to a musical show--music, lyrics, libretto, costumes, sets, dancers, singers, comics. It is not algebraically likely that any college production would excel in each department each year. But Fol-De-Rol bats a very satisfactory .500 or better.

This year's Triangle show is set in Restoration England. Vaporous Charles II, called to the throne from his nightshirt, wants to purchase the Isle of Blight, a French channel patch. As buying agents he sends the Duke of Clarendon, a villain with designs on the King's throne, and the Countess of Sessex, a villainess with designs on the King's person. The plots of Triangle shows rarely jell, they coagulate. This one is no exception. Stopfidget, a scurrilous rakehell who has been exiled to Blight, flies back to England with his hungry balloonist friend, Sweazle. The crown jewels are stolen. Clarendon grabs the throne. London burns. The feminine plebs, weary of the Duke of Clarendon's despotism, picket him with ribald signs: Unfair to Organized Love; We Want Charles; Want Him BAD. Charles is restored and the "semi-opera" ends with the cast singing, as usual, Old Nassau.

The first-night audience gave its usual delighted applause to Fol-De-Rol's tuneful numbers, sophisticated sets and costumes, its elaborate, manfully executed dance maneuvers. It guffawed whenever possible at Alexander Hays Lehmann's well-horsed lines, admired the direction of Graduate Jose Ferrer, applauded the trouper hardihood of Actors Richard Cowdery and Richard Baer. It also enjoyed the minor accidents incidental to a Triangle Show first night: hats falling off sighing lovers, and dummy legs falling off hobbyhorses, a mob scene's mob missing its cue, spotlights searching frantically for actors bravely singing in the dark.

Since the late Brooks Bowman wrote the nationally successful East of the Sun, Triangle songsmiths have had a hard song to beat. Fol-De-Rol is at least full of very good ones, complete with new-fangled long coda endings. When Your Heart's on Fire, by Dixon Morgan and C. E. Davis, seems particularly tuneful, and the ballet music has real distinction.

*Towns to be visited in the next three weeks: New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Columbus, St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Albany and Montclair.

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