The Late Unlamented

It was, by & large, one of the dullest theater seasons in the memory of man. Broadway simply took the cash and let the credit go. Neither the Pulitzer Committee nor the New York Drama Critics' Circle could find any U.S. play of the season worthy of a prize; but business was brisk enough to create acute theater shortages for weeks on end.* For a time theatrical junk collecting was so much the rage that, according to Columnist Walter Winchell, a wag hoped his new show would be able "to overcome the good notices."

Few serious plays had good notices to overcome. The season produced one provocative play, Lillian Hellman's The Searching Wind, one lively stage pamphlet, Edward Chodorov's Decision. War plays, to make any dent at all, had to abandon straight drama, become exultant paeans to martial youth like Winged Victory, comedies of adventure like Jacobowsky and the Colonel. But the season's only two revivals of the classics came through handsomely: Othello set an alltime Broadway record for Shakespeare, The Cherry Orchard had its longest Broadway run.

Comedy was just once out of the top drawer (The Voice of the Turtle), just once out of the second drawer (Over 21). Otherwise it was mostly out of a musty old trunk in the attic. There was not one really good farce, fantasy, thriller. Musicals made the season's biggest splash, but their finest sounds were familiar ones: the brilliant Bizet music in the all-Negro Carmen Jones, the lovely Lehar waltzes of The Merry Widow. Possibly barring One Touch of Venus, musicomedy failed to produce a single decent score, and nowhere produced even a halfway decent book. The net result was an unprecedented string of fancy-figure flops--My Dear Public, Jackpot, Artists and Models, Allah Be Praised!

Producing honors easily went to the Theater Guild, whose two smashes, Othello and Jacobowsky, flank last season's smash-of-the-age Oklahoma! Highest acting honors were almost solidly male. In a dead heat for first place were Elliott Nugent for his superbly natural sergeant in The Voice of the Turtle, Oscar Karlweis for his delightfully rueful refugee in Jacobowsky. Best brace of actors were Paul Robeson and Jose Ferrer as an eloquent Moor and supple lago in Othello. The most engaging performance by an actress turned up in musicomedy--Mary Martin's in One Touch of Venus. Nimble performances: Elisabeth Bergner (The Two Mrs. Carrolls), Margaret Sullavan (The Voice of the Turtle), Mary Philips in Chicken Every Sunday. Actresses, in a sense, had other fish to fry. Five of them turned playwright; one, Ruth Gordon, rang the bell with Over 21.

* Unlike the new 30% taxon nightclubs, the 20% tax on theater tickets has hurt business very little.

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