Theater: Fantasies in Mittyland

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Skyscraper is a statistical rarity—a perfectly average musical.

Julie Harris plays an antique dealer who is bent on saving her little brick house in mid-Manhattan from the bulldozer. The encroaching girders of a new skyscraper are stalking her, and the bidding is brisk—$165,000 for her Rutherford B. Hayes era dwelling. Julie has a two-track mind, and she is forever dream-goofing into funny fantasies in Mittyland with her effete shop assistant, amusingly played by Charles Nelson Reilly. But when she is present in tense and sense, Julie is staunch and she is bright. She knows that the crass entrepreneurs of the skyscraper plan to sheathe it in—pardon the expression —aluminum. A handsome young architect (Peter L. Marshall) shows her his original plans: not aluminum but glass. Once the builders agree to erect the glass box, Julie caves in, house and heart. Good skyscraper gets girl.

For a musical ostensibly about the New York that is, Skyscraper is jarringly out of tune with the temper of the town. When the entire city has finally become hotly landmark-conscious, here is a musical that aligns itself with pluto-philistines bent on upending another giant translucent sardine can in the sky. Topically way off key is a cringe-making number that hymns, for the umpteenth time, the glories of New York. John Lindsay knows how old-hat that one is.

A few hot embers glow in this musical ashcan. Choreographer Michael Kidd has contributed a kinetic build-it-yourself skyscraper dance that is a cross between a fertility rite and a Creative Playthings toy. It sometimes looks like a block-long frieze of girls' rumps in a fine frenzy rolling. There is also a cute rye-humored display of mass delirium in a delicatessen. The score—placebo placid—soothes without stimulating.

Julie Harris is a diminutive tower of strength. As ever, she plays two roles, the one that is written and the one that is unconsciously self-imposed. With each performance she acts out the urge that made her an actress; and the pluck, yearning and will behind that vocation make the playgoer root for her even while the plot ensures her defeat.