New Show in Manhattan

Sons o' Fun (produced by the Shuberts). Having given Hellzapoppin almost the national standing of the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument, Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson last week raised the curtain (and the roof) on a new epic of insanity. Sons o' Fun decidedly takes after its Hellzapoppa, even going him one better at times. But, just as clearly, its mother is an oldfashioned, hard-plugging show girl: a lot of the show is straight routine revue.

Dizziest part of the evening comes during the half hour before the regular performance starts, when Comic Frank Libuse runs wild as "head usher," people climb a ladder to reach their box, a horde of customers have to go through a Coney Island Crazy House (treadmills, wobbly stairs, wind machines) to get to their seats.

After that Sons o' Fun goes a bit daffy-down-hilly, though still heavily punctuated with gags and gunfire, "auction sales" and dancing in the aisles, black outs and whirring bats, actors chasing girls and women having babies. But the distaff side of the show makes itself felt with sultry, hip-shaking "Souse American Way" Carmen Miranda (The Streets of Paris}, brassy Ella Logan, peppery Dance-stars Rosario & Antonio, song-&-dance routines, puppeteers, jugglers, performers on a conch-like object called a sing-a-tina.

Sons o' Fun is a Hellzapop,pin that has stopped sleeping in its underwear: a trifle more class, a trifle less roughhouse. It won't make any new converts to heathen ism, but there should be no backsliders from the enormous ranks of the faithful.

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