PLAYGOER

"Billion Dollar Baby" purports to be a musical about the fabulous twenties. As a cynical ballyhoo of all that is shallow in the Jazz Age, it contains some outstanding ballet by Jerome Robbins, danced by Joan McCracken, some interesting if not catchy music by Morton Gould, and a negligible book. But it treats neither the twenties nor the audience the way they should be treated.

To a lot of people, the decade of the twenties has a world of associations-- the Lost Generation, Greenwich Village, money, alcohol, sex, money, and Crash! You can throw F. Scott Fitzgerald in there somewhere, too. "Billion Dollar Baby" ignores the interesting things about the Jazz Age, and laughs condescendingly, at the length of ladies' skirts, at dance marathons, at speakeasies, and at all the shallow surface of a frenzied era.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green have written a book, it says on the program, but it doesn't amount to much. The "story" is about a Staten Island flapper who wanted to marry money and did, after losing a Miss America beauty contest, visting a speak on the arm of a fated gunman, eluding a greasy gin-mill manager, falling in love with another gunman, jilting a dance-marathon winner, and double-crossing the favored trigger-man.

The story is ugly, so are the costumes, but the dancing is outstanding. Most of what humor there is comes from the dances and not from the book. Morton Gould's music, if not juke-box fodder, is at least appropriate.

Mitzi Green, playing a sort of Texas Guinan rele, does well within a limited range. The rest of the cast has little chance to shine. Max Goberman's orchestra is big and competent.

"Billion Dollar Baby" has two acts; the first is too long and monothemistic, feverishly satirizing the raccoon coat and bathtub gin, while the second, in a different vein, is a Daliesque stylization of a flapper's dream. The last scene is a throwback to Act I, with the flapper marrying the millionaire and the stock market tumbling down upon their presumably empty heads.

Musicals too often represent the crassly commercial side of theatre, and the cumbersome "Billion Dollar Baby" can be classed with the average Hollywood-influenced money-maker. It's big business, and it may even be entertainment, but it's not art. Pretentiousness has won out over simplicity, and the entire production, instead of being consistently light, tuneful, and humorous (like "On the Town"), is cluttered and heavy, with only occasional flashed of brilliance shining through, jgt