"Tomorrow Is Manana"

With one-fifth of its 1948 budget and ballyhoo, the Pudding has kept up its postwar standards in presenting "Tomorrow is Manana," which opened last night at the clubhouse before an enthusiastic audience.

Tony Bonner's music was the high spot of the show in the composing department. With imagination, variety, and a beautiful sense of timing and color, Bonner has woven a scorer which should stand comparison with the best of Pudding music. His orchestration is brassy where it should be, and borrows a bare minimum from the all-too-familiar body of Latin American songs on the market.

The book, written by Clem Wood and Jingo Carroll, while not up to the standards set by the score, is consistently competent as a vehicle and perfectly adapted to the cast. The plot--The New Deal a la Luce in sleepy Anygnay, S.A.--is sufficiently irrational to set off the sharpness of the lines themselves, and needs comparatively little further consideration.

Bob Mhyrum as Roderigo, "the peon's amigo," Nick Benton as Roxanne Rye, and Palmer Dixon's leering portrayal of Fingers Spumoni carry the scenes where the script itself might not sustain a non-musical interlude; but it remained for Fred Gwynne, cast as Pablo the Peon, to stop the show.

Gwynne's solemn and somnolent Pablo was a thing of beauty. He opened and closed the show on a high note of artistic lassitude, and managed to dominate almost every scene he appeared in from a completely horizonal position.

The piece avoided the standard amateur musical fault of relying on a lot of individual hamming. The dances, directed by James Venable, were exceptional, especially in view of the miniscule proportions of the Clubhouse stage. Robert Purinton and Roger Butler, the solo dancers, managed to mix extreme competence and gentle burlesque with a delicacy and enthusiasm that made the ballet sections much more than mere time-fillers.

Staging, scenery, and costuming were well done indeed.

The music and lyrics carried the main weight, however. From overture to final chorus, the songs were the strong point. All types of musical comedy song were well accounted for. "Passport and a Sigh" and "Halcyon Days" are truly fine solo numbers on the popular-song level; "Tomorrow is Manana" and "Anygnay" made exciting production numbers; and the lyrics in "The Best Things in Life Are in 'Life' " and "They Can't Get Along Without Me" made these ensembles the top numbers of the show.

There were faults. A slow start, some shaky work by the chorus, visibly nervous in its first minutes on stage, and an occasional tendency towards out-of-hand mugging smudged the record. But the whole thing was undertaken with a spirit which indicates that with a couple more performances matters will be really' bubbling along.

The only strong criticism is that Pablo was allowed to sleep through the curtain calls. If the Pudding wants to win friends, they better wake Gwynne up and give him a call all by himself. Maybe they could rig a hammock in midstage.