The rush for seats is in full swing for the 1958-59 Broadway season, and we suggest you scramble for your ducats right now. Which shows? Well, we've spent several salubrious hours peering into our crystal martini pitcher and have come up with these hardy specimens that should be worth your attention:
By way of musicals, keep an eye out for Harold J. Rome's melodious retake of Destry Rides Again, with Andy Griffith and Gwen Verdon in the saddle; Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Flower Drum Song, their adaptation of C. Y. Lee's novel on San Francisco's Chinatown; drama critic Walter Kerr's Goldilocks, for which he is writing the book and lyrics along with his frau, Jean Kerr; Arthur Laurent's adaptation of the work of another Lee-Gypsy, A Memoir – set to star Ethel Merman; a song-and-dance version of the old S. N. Behrman play, Serena; the Sean O'Casey classic, Juno and the Paycock, wired for sound by Marc Blitzstein for Shirley Booth and Melvyn Douglas. Also, watch for Abe Burrows' musical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which might be starring Sydney Chaplin and The Spirit Is Willing, which could see Greer Garson and Van Johnson poltergeisting about in this musical version of the Robert Sherwood movie, The Ghost Goes West. Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel is off to a musical remake, At the Grand, with Paul Muni, but a West Coast try-out indicates it needs a major overhaul. Similarly, although Audrey Hepburn is the Oxford enchantress in a musical to-do based on Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson fantasy, last year's London run was small shakes, and the show still needs more than a star to make it twinkle.
The straight plays come by the gross, and this is an attempt to spot the spectaculars: who could miss with Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of fhe Poet, with a cast headed by Eric Portman and Helen Hayes? The Old Friends is Irwin Shaw's adaptation of a Marcel Achard Paris hit, Patate, with Tom Ewell donning a French accent; Howard Teichman's The Girls in 509 sounds like a romp because it will return Imogene Coca and Dorothy Gish to the boards; and Drink to Me Only is recommended only because George Abbott is directing. The Pleasure of His Com-pany, written by Samuel Taylor and Cornelia Otis Skinner, will include the latter in the cast with Charles Ruggles and Walter Abel, under Cyril Ritchard's direction. The Man in the Dog Suit, with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, is a weird package the pair have already proven in summer stock. And consider these: The Disenchanted, Budd Schlllberg and Harvey Breitt's dramatization of the fading years of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short life; an as-yet-untitled play by Arthur Miller, which may star his wife; Anatomy of a Murder, a courtroom nail-biter taken from the best-selling novel: and Paddy Chayefsky's fantasy The Dybuk from Woodhaven.
A half dozen more plays may stem from the native heath, and come as an unexpected pleasure. But some of the best will come from over the waves: the Old Vic in a Bard repertoire which will include Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Henry V. There will also be La Plume de Ma Tanfe, a French review which hit mightily in London: Benn Levy's The Rape of the Belt, the reprise of a Greek legend starring Constance Cummings: and Duel of the Angels, Christopher Fry's iambic version of another ravishment, Giraudoux's The Rape of Lucrece.
With such a fat and sassy set of imports, plus some of the most pungent and provocative American writing around, the coming season might well be a rouser.
