New Play in Manhattan

Visit to a Small Planet (by Gore Vidal) attracted considerable attention as a satirical TV yarn about a man from a distant and civilized planet who. via flying saucer, visits his "hobby," the Earth. It later aroused considerable speculation as to how, without being sadly watered down, a good saucerful of TV fun could fill a regulation soup bowl of a play. The problem has been solved, on the whole quite happily, by not turning Visit to a Small Planet into a play. It has been turned, instead, into a kind of vaudeville show, with two expert comedians, Cyril Ritchard and Eddie Mayehoff, handling the routines.

Visit does have a genuine and very pleasant first act. The visitor arrives in 1957 from afar, his timing a little askew: he had hoped (and dressed) for the Civil War. Under the surveillance of a general from the Pentagon, he looks about, comments, inquires, and finding that waging war is still Earth's mightiest talent, is all ready to wage an outsized one himself. After that, though satire still fitfully raises its slightly aching head, Visit introduces just about every known vaudeville and revue routine except xylophone-playing and sawing a woman in half. There is an animal act of a sort. There is a mind-reading act. There is a display of levitation. There is, every so often, a monologuist. There are Imitations of Woodland Sounds and Jungle Noises. There is a musical number, a sort of Songs of Three Wars. Indeed, the minute words fail, Author Vidal perkily rushes in with a new sound effect. When inspiration burns low, he throws another monologue on the fire.

With anything less than the Messrs. Ritchard and Mayehoff, all this would be no better show business than it is playwriting. But Mayehoff has no equal at harrumphing or at jerking his head, at skinning a cliche or stuffing a shirt or making very little sound like even less. And no one has quite the lost-in-a-balloon aplomb or the Mad-King-of-Bavaria hauteur of Cyril Ritchard. At the same time no one knows more surefire tricks. Ritchard will do as many absurd and outrageous things to keep an audience amused as a desperate father will do to make his four-year-old darling eat.

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