Canadian Capers

There was a whoopla in Toronto last week that should soon spread all over Canada. The Canadian Army unloosed a high-spirited, always likable, often lavish soldier show. The Yank's This Is The Army had given it a model to learn from and then disregard. Two Toronto sergeants, 26-year-old Frank Shuster and 24-year-old Johnny Wayne, had authored a peppy book, some perky tunes and lyrics. Canada's Jack Arthur, Broadway's Romney Brent and Hollywood's Aida Broadbent had punched the show into shape. And civilian donations had decked it out in mighty fine feathers.

With only a quarter as many as This Is the Army's cast of 300, The Army Show provides no breath-taking spectacle of massed men in uniform, no rafter-shaking choruses. Nor has it an Irving Berlin to give it tunes like I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen or This Is the Army, Mr. Jones. But it has the CWACS (Canadian Women's Army Corps) to lend it lure. And it has a twofold function: besides playing Canada's cities to swell the Troops Welfare Fund, it will tour Canada's army camps (in shortened form), later troupe for the boys overseas.

The first half of the show, laid in a canteen, moves fast with sentiment, boogie-woogie, corn with butter and salt, corn without them, a male cancan, a brass-hat quartet, which warbles:

On behalf . . . of the General Staff

We'd like to warn the critics to be careful what they write,

Their write-ups should be written in a favorable light;

Who knows what letters for the draft are on their way tonight

On behalf . . . of the General Staff.*

The second half of the show verges on large-scale revue. Soldiers dream of beautiful white-clad women; a handsome ballet to Chopin has a lyrical start, a lunatic finish; a big South American number combines hot dancing with jokes ("Army life is terribly strict--lights out at 9 o'clock, women out at 10"). For the finale, veterans of World War I clamber on to the stage while the cast slides into the past with Tipperary, Pack Up Your Troubles, Mad'moiselle from Armentieres. Then the cast roars into the future with:

We'll make a job of it this time,

We're gonna show them and how;

For this time is gonna be the last time,

So let's make a job of it now.*

*Reprinted by permission of the copyright owners: Gordon V. Thompson, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

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