Call Me Madam. By Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. Music
by Irving Berlin. (Coliseum.)
I TAKE this piece for a sort of reprisal. For several decades American audiences have manfully schooled themselves to enjoy, and here and there even to understand, the faded insular topiCality of Gilbert and Sullivan. It is now our turn for a corresponding ordeal, and I must say we rise to the occasion very creditably, laughing like mad at the frequent allusions to an indiscretion committed by President Truman two or three or four years ago, and seeing instantaneously the point of any innuendo about the State Department. Britain, once more, can take it.
I am afraid that I could not. I admit that the appointment of Mrs. Mesta, a celebrated Washington hostess, as United States Ambassador to the Duchy of Luxembourg, has, or once had, the same sort of sensational yet disarming appeal which one associated with the Loch Ness Monster. But, once you base a musical comedy on any sort of reality, you create a conflict which can only be resolved by making it a very good musical comedy and performing it very well. Neither requirement is, to my mind, met at the Coliseum. The tunes are not memorable, the dancing is rather aimless and the players, though they warm up towards the end, fail to cast a spell over us. Miss Billie Worth, in the principal part, goes energetically through the repertoire of a comedienne without ever actually being comic, except in the very broadest sense of that word ; and Mr: Anton Walbrook, as the ultra-European hero, wears— especially when he is called upon to sing—an air of slightly bewildered resignation, like a heavy-weight hunter which suddenly finds itself taking part in a historical pageant in aid of the Wire Fund. Miss Shani Wallis, on the other hand, sings and acts with considerable grace and a sort of Pont-like imperturbability.
It is only fair to record that a packed audience received the
performance with every symptom of delight. PETER FLEMING.
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