New Play in Manhattan

The Happy Time (by Samuel Taylor; based on Robert Fontaine's book; produced by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II) wheels into position another of the aggressively picturesque families that enjoy great popularity on Broadway. The Bonnards, headed by jaunty, Gallic grandpere (Edgar Stehli), are French-Canadians living in Ottawa in the early 19205. There are grandpere's three sons--a "crazy violinist" (Claude Dauphin), a round-the-clock tosspot (Kurt Kasznar), and a round-the-town ladies' man (Richard Hart); his often disapproving Scottish-Presbyterian daughter-in-law (Leora Dana); and his grandson (Johnny Stewart) who stands on the curb of adolescence waiting for his voice to change. When a pretty girl (Eva Gabor) comes to help with the housework, love stirs for the first time in the ladies' man, sex in the boy.

One of those rather too French concoctions that act as though Gallic were derived from gal, The Happy Time fetches its laughs from souvenir garters, stolen nighties, La Vie Parisienne, grandpa's amorous exertions that require medical aid, grandson's amorous speculations that require parental talks. Lest any of this seem unduly coarse, the characters are made wacky or lovable as well as lecherous, and the story is sprayed with period allusions and pidgin French.

The play has some funny lines, but not many; and some nice performances, especially Dauphin's. The outstanding thing about it is its phenomenal memory: it exploits every type of gag, farce twist or comedy situation that ever made good in the past. It is one more of the Rodgers & Hammerstein-produced hits (John Loves Mary, Happy Birthday) that give the obvious and the mediocre a finishing-school education, and that hug a safe, tried formula on the theory of nothing venture, nothing lose.

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