New Musical in Manhattan

Damn Yankees (book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop; music & lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross) involves most of the team that turned out The Pajama Game. This time baseball is their target, and with pretty nearly as happy results. Under George Abbott's direction, there is a constant sense of zip, an occasional effect of explosion. There is plainly a belief that all music aspires toward a brass band's exuberance, all locomotion toward a fire engine's clanging speed. And there is a very proper belief that one Gwen Verdon is the equal of a hand-picked chorus line, a spotlighted siren, a surefire comic, and a sought-after premiere danseuse.

Damn Yankees tells of a fanatical middle-aged rooter for the Washington Senators who mutters that he'd sell his soul to have them take the pennant from the Yankees. At once a buyer with a cloven hoof appears, and transforms beefy Joe Boyd into lithe, 22-year-old Joe Hardy, the greatest ballplayer of all time. There is, however, an escape clause in the deal; and to keep Joe from escaping his clutches, the Devil puts redheaded Miss Verdon to work as an enchantress.

Though she pretty much fails with Joe, she lays waste the audience. Topping her Can-Can triumph, she dances superbly --never more so than when she spoofs; she slinks and invites and caresses, kicks up her heels, swings her legs, coils and uncoils her hips, sends garments flying--all the while singing such ditties as Whatever Lola Wants . . . Lola Gets. She wears a double crown: no one can make sex more seductive, or more hilarious.

Ray Walston is a first-rate Devil. Disdaining pitchfork theatrics, he is a provokingly cool customer even when buying souls, with a tart, casual manner and a fine, stylish unwholesomeness. As Joe Hardy. Stephen Douglass does all that is required of him -- bats .524 for the Senators, sings very well for the show. Richard Adler-Jerry Ross songs and Bob Fosse's dances have hardly more than the outdoor virtues, but they have the right rousingness and tingle. And William and Jean Eckart's sets are amusing and crisp.

Damn Yankees is less perfectly sustained than The Pajama Game; it slows down in places, or to keep fast, turns choppy. And it may disappoint people who find baseball a bore. For all others, however, the long jinx on baseball as a stage theme has been broken at last by the high jinks of a good, gay show.

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