Nursery Crhymes

Babes in Toyland (Buena Vista), Walt Disney's first live-action musical, is a wonderful piece of entertainment for children under five, but children over five who plan to see it will be well advised to take some Berlitz brushup lessons in baby talk.

Suggested (though hardly inspired) by Victor Herbert's 1903 operetta, in which Mother Goose was overstuffed with theatrical goodies, Disney's nursery crhymes involve Tom Piper (Tommy Sands), Mary Contrary (Annette), Boy Blue, Bo Peep, Willie Winkie, Simple Simon, Jack and Jill, and Mother Goose herself, along with some ringers called Roderigo, Gonzorgo, Barnaby (Ray Bolger) and the Toymaker (Ed Wynn). Tom and Mary, the story goes, are about to be married, but that naughty old Barnaby, wielding a wicked snickersneer, does his worst to louse up the proceedings.

Unhappily, so does the librettist, who has chosen to write in verse: "Even though Tom may be gone His memory I'll keep; I'm sure that we can carry on With income from our sheep." So does Director Jack (Lucky Me) Donohue, who can't even extort amusing pedal persiflage from Actor Bolger, one of the cleverest comic dancers of the age. And so do Lyricist Mel Leven and Songwriter George Bruns, who might profitably have excised Glenn MacDonough's words ("Toyland! Toyland! Little girl and boyland!") but should have restricted the impulse to "modernize" Victor Herbert's music--might as well try to jazz up Piesporter Goldtroepfchen with Pepsi-Cola.

Still, Toyland has its charms. The March of the Toys is always fun to hear, and even more fun to see performed by brightly colored toys of all sorts and sizes, synchronized in what Disney & Co. call "animotion." Singer Sands, who most of the time is about as hard to swallow as a Vaseline sandwich, suddenly pulls on a fright wig and does a brilliant bughouse turn as a batty old bag who reads tea leaves and such. And Villain Bolger is granted at least one grand line. "Come!" he calls sepulchrally to his comic accomplices. "Let us lurk!"

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