Theater: Unflappable Flapper

Mame is the Mother Courage of Beekman Place. Stock-market crashes and depressions don't faze her. Pregnant unwed secretaries waddling down spiral staircases amid Japanese modern mobiles don't lift her eyebrows. When she meets a Southern aristocrat named Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, she promptly marries him, goes "Sooth," and teaches the hunting gentry a thing or two by bringing the fox back alive. Mame has gusto, gallantry, and an unshakable philosophy: "Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death."

To her orphaned ward, Patrick, and to millions of Americans, Auntie Mame has been a durable feast as heroine of book, play and movie. Maine is now the Broadway season's last show and best musical—scant praise this year. The assault of amplified sound is so steady that if Van Gogh could hear it he would cut off his other ear. Yet the score is not unappealing. The title song and Act I finale is Jerry Herman's lucky bid to match his Hello, Dolly! number; the opening-night audience swamped it in applause the moment it began.

As Mame, Angela Lansbury has the lavish flair of her costuming. Her singing, dancing and acting are a triple treat. But she lacks that ultimate intangible: star authority—the difference between leasing a stage and owning it. As Mame's actressy pal, Beatrice Arthur is a crafty comedienne, a woman who delivers a line as if someone had put lye in her martinis. And Frankie Michaels as young Patrick has the charm of an acting boy rather than a boy actor. It is good to have the season end not with a bomb but a winner.