Coagulated Treacle

Of a ship that has suffered an accident at sea, it is sometimes said, in the vocabulary of marine gallantry, that she came into port "under her own power." In any given season, a surprising number of crippled shows, often musicals, limp into Manhattan listing badly. For them, Broadway is not a safe haven, but a bone yard.

Look to the Lilies belongs to this sorry lot. Adapted from the 1963 film Lilies of the Field, which starred Lilia Skala and Sidney Poitier, the show is peculiarly ill-attuned to the temper of the present time. The musical presents a group of West German nuns relocated in the Southwestern U.S. They are trying to minister to Mexicans and Indians under the flinty, egocentric but spiritually incandescent will of their superior, Mother Maria (Shirley Booth). Into their midst comes a Negro on the lam, Homer Smith (Al Freeman Jr.). It is Mother Maria's conviction that Homer is the chosen instrument of God for building a chapel in their faith-parched wilderness. Naturally, he builds it. So much for suspense.

The age is such that the only nun people would queue up for at the box office would be one who is leaving the church, and the only black, one who is demanding reparations from it. Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn must have lost interest before they wrote the score, and any playgoer will lose heart as soon as he hears it. Whatever money Joshua Logan received for his lethargic direction or Jo Mielziner for his anemic sets was collected under false pretenses.

Shirley Booth and Al Freeman Jr. summon up considerable professional zest, and contrive to pour the coagulated treacle of Leonard Spigelgass's lines as if it were liquid gold. One may wish them better luck next time. Better sense they should have already.

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