New Musicals in Manhattan

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (book by Betty Smith & George Abbott; music by Arthur Schwartz; lyrics by Dorothy Fields; produced by Mr. Abbott in association with Robert Fryer) is a good musical until it becomes a bad movie. The Betty Smith bestseller has been given a kind of hurdy-gurdy stage treatment, mingling turn-the-crank emotions with turn-of-the-century nostalgia. So long as the tunes are lilting and rowdy and gay, and half the neighborhood is dancing in the street, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has real swing and the proper bang. But as, more & more, the tunes have a sob in them, and Francie's jobless barfly father sways homeward to their sad refrains, the fun and the fresh ness fade out of the show.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is much the brighter for Arthur Schwartz's music, and nothing short of blessed by Shirley Booth's playing of a gay, warmhearted floozy who calls each of her "husbands" Harry and is just wild about them all. Composer Schwartz, in a hockshop ballad called Mine 'Til Monday and in a furniture-shop fandango called Look Who's Dancing, lets rip with oldfashioned, foam-on-the-beer high spirits. And when Miss Booth steps out in a tricky, lilting round song, Love Is the Reason, the show strikes 12. With her lazy twang, her ripe Brooklynese, her period curves, her perfect timing, she can even get away with a fantastic low-comedy "childbirth" in which the baby is smuggled in from outside.

Except for one deplorable song, Miss Booth is complete mistress of the show's barndoor-broad humor. But, as Francie's parents, pleasant-voiced Johnny Johnston and gravely likable Marcia Van Dyke can only go along with the show's tearjerking banalities. Their almanac of woe is not only tedious in itself; it inspires chin-up music called Don't Be Afraid, and a third-rate ballet put together out of expressionistic leftovers. Betty Smith's tree starts to grow downward after a while, like a weeping willow.

Make a Wish (book by Preston Sturges, based on Ferenc Molnar's The Good Fairy; music & lyrics by Hugh Martin; produced by Harry Rigby & Jule Styne in association with Alexander H. Cohen) has only two real weak points--its music and its book. There area number of secondary virtues. Its scene designer, Raoul Pene Du Bois, has splashed it with bright Parisian color. Its star, Nanette Fabray, is extremely engaging and girlish. Harold Lang and Helen Gallagher are an expert dance team, who have bounce without brashness, know how to handle a song. Melville Cooper is so finished a character actor that he raises a laugh where almost no one else would even reach for one. And Gower Champion's choreography is consistently lively. A students' ball is made downright bacchanalian; and a department-store bargain sale inspires the most hilarious ballet since Jerome Robbins' Mack Sennett masterpiece in High Button Shoes.

But Make a Wish is no more than a frequently glittering makeshift. There is little story: Miss Fabray is a pretty French orphan who solves the problem of impecunious youthful love by playing hard to get with well-heeled middle-aged lust. But never did such a small amount of story entail such a vast amount of book. With almost nothing to go on, it seems to go on forever. Nor is Hugh Martin's score any real help. There are occasional pleasant tunes, such as Who Gives a Sou?. But the score is no more catchy than it is distinguished; and the lyrics, though now & then clever, are never crisp. This is too bad, for Make a Wish offers a nice meal, barring the meat & potatoes.

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