New Play in Manhattan

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (adapted by Elaine Ryan from Ludwig Bemelmans' novel; produced by Nancy Stern & George Nichols 3rd) strongly suggests that the printed page is Ludwig Bemelmans' proper habitat. It certainly is for Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep: the journey from book to stage winds up much more baggage than Bemelmans. Moreover, any show calling for 13 lavish scenes, 50 frenzied characters, a tropical earthquake and the billowing Atlantic Ocean also calls for a composer and a choreographer.

Proceeding by freighter from Biarritz to South America, the play chiefly chronicles the long-established relationship (or lack of one) between a rich, rampageous, epileptic Ecuadorian general and a prim, suicide-seeking, coffin-toting English governess. A kind of double target, Now I Lay Me contrasts farcically--as E. M. Forster and others have done more seriously--the torrid zone of the emotions with the frigid; i.e., Latin excesses and flamboyance with British repressions and good form.

With his swooping fancies and suave violence, Bemelmans at his best does not so much abandon reality as transcend it. But what Bemelmans can evoke in a paragraph, Adapter Ryan scarcely suggests in a whole production number. As gaudy extravaganza, the show is sometimes fair fun, and Fredric March and Florence Eldridge squeeze some good burlesque moments out of their roles. But there is not much human warmth to the laughter, and there are none of the suddenly touching moments there should be. Miss Ryan's orchestration all but drowns out Mr. Bemelmans' music.

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