The Week in Manhattan

The Time of Your Life (by William Saroyan) remains, after some 16 years, the most engaging of Saroyan's plays. Revived at the City Center, it suffers less from the ravages of time than from the unsociableness of space: in that vast hall, the play's intimate, childlike mood never quite lassoes the audience. But what was always brightest about the play--its procession of cockeyed characters through the swinging doors of a waterfront dive-- still has considerable lure. Its old Kit Carsonish liar, whose opening gun is "I don't suppose you ever fell in love with a midget weighing 39 pounds," its beplumed society lady who springs to her feet when a Salvation Army hymn strikes up, its old woman jabbering rapid-fire Italian, its nervous swain constantly dropping nickels into a pay phone, its persistent fanatic nursing along the marbles game--these have a fine exuberance and humor about them, and have the wackiness --plus a Saroyanesque warmth--of a You Can't Take It with You.

Excellent at conveying a slightly alcoholic gaiety in people, Saroyan is far less persuasive about the all-abounding goodness in life. When his honky-tonk's lights dim to a prettier glow, when his wealthy drunk plays both God and Maecenas to prostitutes and bums, when the only bad man in the play is obligingly bumped off, there circulates a too-starry-eyed--or merely glassy-eyed--optimism.

The poet in Saroyan, unlike the prankster in him, lacks the power to override the facts of life. There is something beguiling about Saroyan's fantasies, but soft-bellied about his truths.

In a generally pleasant cast are such well-known performers as Franchot Tone, Myron McCormick, Paula Laurence, Harold Lang, John Carradine. And with Irving Berlin's daughter Linda, Saroyan's ex-wife Carol Grace, and Stokowski's estranged wife Gloria Vanderbilt each playing a bit part, The Time of Your Life is the season's most glamorous bit-party.

Festival (by Sam and Bella Spewack) takes place in the rococo sunroom of a music impresario. Phones blare, tempers explode, rival artists snarl and spit. Then a lady music teacher arrives with a child prodigy to make things really hum. Soon she is rumored to be a famous pianist's discarded mistress and the prodigy their illegitimate son. With the child's real father suspecting his wife, and a lady cellist buzzing with sex. it all suggests a game of musical sofas.

The Spewacks dutifully include in Festival almost every farcical gambit known.

The show has some amusing lines and, here and there, some lively routine antics.

But far too many of its people, incidents and gimmicks are by now the markdowns and close-outs of satirical farce, and the pandemonious approach accentuates the feeling of a bargain sale.

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