New Musical in Manhattan

Early to Bed (music by Thomas ("Fats") Waller; book & lyrics by George Marion Jr.; produced by Richard Kollmar) reached Broadway last week after tangling with censorship in Boston, where the show's locale was hastily changed from a Martinique bordello to a gambling casino. In Manhattan the producer decided to gamble on the bordello. Without it -- since the point of the story is that Madame Rowena's establishment is mis taken for a girl's school -- the plot could hardly have unwound, which might have been a very good thing. For, without letup, the book grinds its spurs into its one spavined joke from a starting post of tastelessness to a finish line of tedium.

Otherwise Early to Bed is a brisk Broadway show, produced with pre-Pearl Harbor opulence and making up in snap and lure for what it lacks in style and wit. The girls are beautiful, the costumes bright, the dancing fast & furious. Though "Fats" Waller's score provides no new Honeysuckle Rose and, in general, is bet ter danced than sung, it is pleasantly satisfying. The Ladies Who Sing With a Band is a gay spoof of female mike-blasters, This Is So Nice is a likeable ditty, There's a Man in My Life, a warming love song, and Hi-De-Ho-High is good Waller husky-dusky. One lyric offers the final criticism of liquid hosiery:

It decants on your pants.

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