Summer Debuts

Summer theater is mostly a collection of have-been hits and aging or never-were stars getting by on memories of better days. Mixed in, however, are always a few yowling infants getting scrubbed up for possible Broadway de buts. Last week audiences got their first look at two of the most promising of the summer's candidates: in Detroit Mere dith Willson's lavish new musical Here's Love, and in Boston, Jennie, a musical with the indomitable Mary Martin.

Starring Janis Paige, Craig Stevens and Laurence Naismith, Here's Love is based on the film Miracle on 34th Street. Like Willson's The Music Man, it is a loud and frequently frenzied melding of sentiment and humor, more effective in its large production numbers than in any individual song. The plot involves a kindly Macy's Santa Claus who loves kids and gets so identified with his part that he sends them to Gimbels if Macy's doesn't have it. The Detroit Free Press's Louis Cook found it "joyful and gay, and if you don't feel a happy tear gathering now and then you're a real slob." After stops in Washington and Philadelphia, it will open in New York on Oct. 3.

Jennie, with lyrics by Howard Dietz and music by Arthur Schwartz, is based on the career of Actress Laurette Tay lor. As the young Laurette, Mary Mar tin puts on one of her best and funniest performances, and Laurette's barnstorming early appearances in all manner of creaking melodramas are made-to-order for Mary's comic talents. She plays a frontier mother rescuing her child from a grizzly bear, warbles a ditty from a torture wheel, and as a harem wife be wails her lot:

The sultan is my lord and master, I wish he would make his rounds faster, I yearn for him, I burn for him, But I have to wait my turn for him, O-o-o-h these harem nights.

But the critics agreed that the show is too long and often too solemn. It is, said the Boston Globe's Kevin Kelly, "a jerry-built musical shack of a show badly in need of a carpenter." The overall verdict: salvageable, with work. Opens in New York Oct. 17 after a stop in Detroit.

Other hopefuls presently trying out:

She Didn't Say Yes, a Greenwich Village triangle, with Joan Hackett, Joan Caulfield, William Redfield and Peggy Cass, was praised by Boston Critic Elliot Norton as "the most promising new play on the summer theater circuit . . . idiotically funny." Top laurels went to Actress Joan Hackett, who, according to Norton, "takes the play away from most of the others most of the time and puts it in her pocket." Its present schedule calls for one-week stands at Ogunquit, Me.; Skowhegan, Me.; Philadelphia, and Latham, N.Y.

The Millionairess, a revival of the Shaw play (last seen on Broadway in 1952 with Katharine Hepburn), stars Carol Channing, who drew a favorable road review from Variety in her first attempt at a straight role. Millburn, N.J. (two weeks); Falmouth, Mass, (one week); Nyack, N.Y. (one week).

The Indoor Sport, by Jack Perry, concerns a domestic crisis in the lives of a tennis star (Shari Lewis) and a Pulitzer prizewinning foreign correspondent (Darren McGavin). McGavin's performance won praise, but the play itself is a long and somewhat clumsy cliche. Fayetteville, N.Y.; Falmouth, Mass.; Westport, Conn.

Scheduled to open this week are three more entries, to be followed by one last late starter on Aug. 19:

Zenda, a musical version of Anthony Hope's classic novel (which gave the name of its fictional locale--Ruritania --to a whole genre of similarly romantic works), stars Alfred Drake. It has music by Vernon Duke (April in Paris). Drake's co-star is Anne Rogers. San Francisco (seven weeks); Los Angeles (two weeks); Pasadena, Calif.; opens in New York Nov. 26.

Apollo and Miss Agnes is a musical adapted from Giraudoux's The Apollo of Bellac, with a book by Alice and Bob Banner. Cast includes David Wayne, Nancy Dussault, Maria Karnilova and Reginald Gardiner. It opens a two-week run in Dallas and is scheduled to open in New York early in 1964.

No Bed of Roses is Jan de Hartog's play The Fourposter set to music (by Martin Kalmanoff). It stars Metropolitan Opera Baritone Walter Cassel and Soprano Gail Manners (Mrs. Cassel). New Hope, Pa. (two weeks).

The Irregular Verb, a comedy by Hugh and Margaret Williams, is about an animal lover who keeps blowing up furrier shops. Claudette Colbert plays the lady who goes bats in the peltry; Cyril Ritchard plays her husband and also directs the play. Mineola, N.Y. (starting Aug. 19 for two weeks); Millburn, N.J. (two weeks); opens in New York Sept. 18.

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