Glass Sliver

By JAY COCKS

THE SLIPPER AND THE ROSE

Directed by BRYAN FORBES Screenplay by BRYAN FORBES, ROBERT B. SHERMAN and RICHARD M. SHERMAN

Around holiday season, stocking-stuffer items like The Slipper and the Rose usually show up, all covered in glitter and good will. These gaudy little baubles are easy enough to tolerate in the floodtide of fellowship that ebbs and flows around Christmas. Holidays are over, however, a cold wet January is upon the land, and The Slipper and the Rose lingers on, looking as foolish as Cinderella hotfooting it out of the palace as her ball gown turns to rags.

Indeed--and alas--this is Cinderella's story, retooled for music by the Sherman brothers (Mary Poppins), who specialize in producing viscous show tunes.

The songs not only cloy, they choke, which must make them as much of a challenge to sing as to hear. In The Slipper and the Rose, the melodies slosh around lyrics that have largely to do with the frustrations of love and royalty. The Prince (Richard Chamberlain) bellyaches tunefully about the difficulty of finding a loved one from amongst the array of regal dogs put forward by his father the King (Michael Hordern). These complaints absorb rather more time than they should, and result, directly or indirectly, in several dance numbers of singular clumsiness. The dancers--presumably professionals--look like nothing so much as the members of a Little League team doing nip-ups before the first game of the season.

In between the acts of this royal variety show are several excursions off to the home of the wicked Stepmother (Margaret Lockwood--the heroine, during rather better times, of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes). There, Cinderella (Gemma Craven) gets snooted by her Stepsisters and gazes sorrowfully into the flames of the scullery fire, waiting for her Fairy Godmother to come along.

In due course, and after several more musical interludes, the Fairy Godmother (Annette Crosbie) breezes in and waves her wand. Cinderella is off in style to the ball, where her charms make the Prince break out in a fine sweat, as if suffering the aftereffects of a curry dinner.

Director Bryan Forbes (The Wrong Box) holds such worthies as the late Edith Evans, Kenneth More and Hordern in reserve for a comic turn or two, but their ministrations are futile. Forbes recklessly appends another act to the Cinderella saga in which the commoner is forbidden to marry the Prince. She is carried by coach from the kingdom, set up in a palace where she can do what she does best -- mope. The Prince knuckles under to the pressures of his station, slouches toward the altar to take another bride. Fairy Godmothers are not large on unhappy endings, however, so there is no serious cause for concern. Even the audience gets a break. Nobody dances at the wedding.

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