New Plays in Manhattan

Cabin in the Sky (book by Lynn Root, lyrics by John Latouche, music by Vernon Duke, produced by Albert Lewis & Vinton Freedley). Something of the comic charm of The Green Pastures pervades this new musical fable conceived by whites for an all-Negro cast. In it the robustly endearing Ethel Waters returns to Broadway. As the wife of an errant colored gentleman who has spent more than spare time with a lovely hussy, she prays for him, on his deathbed, gains for him a six-month reprieve from death while the forces of good & evil wrestle, in plain view of the audience, for his soul. Ethel is on the Lawd's side. On Lucifer's is the hussy. The husband, as Actor Dooley Wilson irresistibly suggests, is somewhere in between. Lucifer is further abetted by a sort of diabolical advertising agency where hellish "idea men" plan new campaigns of temptation. Their idea for Dooley Wilson is a winning ticket in the Irish Sweepstakes. In the end he escapes perdition--by a whisker.

For Ethel Waters' richly varied voice Vernon Duke (April in Paris} provides a bright score, including Taking a Chance on Love and a ragtime fantasy concerning Negro sources in Ancient Egypt, My Old Virginia Home on the Nile ("There'll be doin's in them ruins when we come"). Determined to meet the hussy on her own ground, Ethel also swings her big, scarlet-clad body into the most massive cancan of the season. As the hussy, Negro Ballerina Katherine Dunham is a trim and flexible devil's advocate. Her dancers follow her through a series of jazz-heated formations. The accompaniment of one of them is true, improvised boogie-woogie by Pianist Sidney Tuscher of the hand-picked pit orchestra. Staged by the Russian choreographer George Balanchine, fellow Slav of Composer Duke (real name Vladimir Dukelsky), Cabin in the Sky is proof that for fun and verve there is nothing like a theatrical League of Races.

'Tis of Thee (lyrics by Alfred Hayes, music by Alex North, Al Moss, others; produced by Nat Lichtman) is a straining little revue in which there is so much stale beer, amateurishly brewed, that when a fair grade of theatrical champagne arrives it seems like Veuve Cliquot. Really sparkling is the ballroom dancing of Cappello & Beatrice.

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