The Theater: New Musical in Manhattan, Feb. 5, 1945

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Up in Central Park (book by Herbert & Dorothy Fields; music & lyrics by Sigmund Romberg & Dorothy Fields; produced by Michael Todd) is a period musical about Manhattan that attempts to graft the nefariousness of the Tweed Ring onto the nostalgia of Currier & Ives. The grafting practiced by Boss Tweed and his Tammany henchmen (who "spent" $7,500 on two thermometers and $3,852,196.75 on carpets for the County Courthouse) was, while it lasted, considerably more successful. Pictorially delightful, with gay costumes, ruddy skating scenes, and stylish and evocative sets by Howard Bay, Up in Central Park is theatrically more than a trifle dull.

It is not that the show has nothing to offer but atmosphere. Composer Romberg (Maytime, Blossom Time) has contrived a tuneful if reminiscent score, nicely sung by pretty Maureen Cannon and Wilbur Evans. Choreographer Helen Tamiris has fashioned some pleasant and unhackneyed dances. Herbert & Dorothy Fields have walked right up to Boss Tweed with a courage rare in librettists. But the show, even as a yarn of horse-&-carriage days, badly lacks pace. It equally lacks variety—the songs, dances, Central Park vignettes keep striking the same note. Most of all it lacks humor: Tweed and his gang, who could have been rollickingly lampooned in the style of The Beggars' Opera, stomp around with the authors' sober research still clinging to them like burrs.

Much gayer than the show were enterprising Producer Todd's opening-night flourishes. He invited critics to drive to the theater (itself opposite Central Park) in broughams and barouches. After the curtain fell, first-nighters clambered into tallyhos and victorias, drove along the Park's snowy, moonlit paths to its brightly lighted Tavern-on-the-Green. There hundreds of guests made merry on champagne & caviar at what New York's onetime playboy mayor, Jimmy Walker, dubbed the greatest party "since the days of Diamond Jim Brady."