The Theater: New Play in Manhattan, Oct. 20, 1952

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In Any Language (by Edward Beloin & Henry Garson) boasts a fair enough idea: a posturing, on-the-skids Hollywood star (Uta Hagen) attempting a comeback in a Rome-made art movie. Unfortunately, the audience gets the idea all too soon, and thereafter gets it again & again & again, in louder, lengthier, ever less effective doses. The actress keeps putting on one kind of scene while the Italian director rehearses another, and there are yet other scenes with the husband Miss Hagen is supposed to have divorced but hasn't.

With George Abbott to stage the show, no character very long remains stationary, no telephone silent, no door unentered; noises abound, gadgets accumulate, throngs assemble. But what is offered in the name of comedy is for the most part mere commotion.

There are lively touches, even funny moments, at the expense of both Italian films and American film stars. Actress Hagen can turn amusingly soulful or shrewish or primitive; what she fails to do is create a solid characterization. And the satire is the merest slapstick, the joke is never varied, the fun never sustained. In Any Language is a johnny-one-note scored for a very large brass band.