Almanac

With Billy DcWolfe and Hermione Gingold, a huge cast, an army of writers, and a program promising thirty-three scenes, Almanac certainly has everything but the kitchen sink. The sink isn't important, but a disposal unit would help. Stripped of many scenes and corresponding hardly at all to the program, John Murray Anderson's bloated revue still forges along for three hours. There is obviously enough material to fill another hour or two, but on Tuesday at least, the show called it quits at 11:30 and sprung a hasty finale on an audience settling down for the night.

Since Mr. Anderson tries out a new shuffle of scenes at every performance, no-one can predict Almanac's state at the end of a month's run here. It is not difficult to see, however, that compression is the main problem to be solved. The problem is apparent not only in the remarkable sprawl of the whole show, but in individual scenes as well.

The ingredients of Almanac are the revue staples--satiric sketches, comic monologues, and production numbers. Even more stubbornly than the usual revue, however, the show makes no attempt to tie them with a cohesive thread. The only common elements of the scenes are the superb settings by Pene Du Bois and Thomas Becher, innocuous and infinitely forgettable music by a dozen composers, and a general sophistication which often seems precious. Particularly expressive of these three elements are a "Ballet Ballad" from a story by Oscar Wilde and the opening number, pretentiously invoking the Spirit of Theatre and dull musically, yet striking in its visual contrast of black and white.

Almanac is at its best when Harry Belafonte sings with his intriguing Calypso style and in a few of the sketches for De Wolfe and Miss Gingold. Occasionally bizarre, like "Dinner for One," an aged spinster's banquet for suitors dead and gone, most of these skits have considerable wit and imagination. Though the parody of "Picnic" is rather distasteful, De Wolfe takes a delightful poke at "My Cousin Rachel." Miss Gingold, however, as the dancer, "La Pistachio," provides the most entertaining moments of the revue. Garbed in an uproarious butterfly costume, the lusty old harridan is hilarious as the vamp of Paris '90.