Time Listings: Time Listings, Sep. 12, 1960

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Presidential Countdown (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). The first of nine weekly prime-time programs on the political campaign.

Tues., Sept. 13

Thriller (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). First of a new mystery and suspense series narrated by onetime Monster Boris Karloff.

THEATER

On Broadway

When the 1960-61 season opens next week, the new shows will have to go some to match these favorites, which have come through the summer without getting half baked: Toys in the Attic, the latest play by Lillian Hellman, deftly explores the character of a weak ne'er-do-well (Jason Robards Jr.): Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man, set in a Mineola, I.I. synagogue, brilliantly and with high humor admixes ancient rite with modern psychology; The Miracle Worker owes its excellence to the superb performances of Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, as they re-create the early childhood of blind deaf-mute Helen Keller; The Best Man sketches characters who are a mile wide and an inch deep, but nonetheless offers swift, glib and enjoyable theatrical journalism about campaigning politicians in action. Three musicals stand out: the good-as-ever revival of West Side Story, with many of the original cast; the light, reminiscent story of New York's greatest mayor, Fiorello!; and a winsome Broadway analysis of Elvis Presley called Bye Bye Birdie.

Off Broadway

Air-conditioning has helped the better offerings in the little theaters to survive as well. Among them: The Balcony, French Playwright Jean Genet's dramatic thesis that the world is a brothel and vice versa; The Connection, an awesomely naturalistic study of junkies in their pad; Krapp's Last Tape, a single-actor tour de force about youth and age, on a double bill with The Zoo Story, wherein Playwright Edward Albee creates a critical mass by clanging together a beat with a square; A Country Scandal, an early play of Anton Chekhov, produced professionally in the U.S. for the first time, providing ample and comic proof that minor Chekhov is equal to the major efforts of most others; and Little Mary Sunshine, off-Broadway's phenomenal, sellout musical that spoofs the candy-coated operettas of the '20s.

BOOKS

Best Reading The Human Season, by Edward Lewis Wallant. The grief of a 59-year-old plumber over the sudden death of his wife is the unlikely subject of this remarkably skillful first novel. With telling economy, Author Wallant suggests the climate of a marriage, the texture of sorrow without sentimentality and the twisting agony of an agnostic Job who cannot tame his rage with resignation.

The Sot-Weed Factor, by John Barth. This comedy of picaresque errors and escapades, set in colonial Maryland, is as deadly serious as it is wildly funny. Its sobering thesis: since man cannot penetrate the multiple masks of reality, he can never really know himself.

Taken at the Flood, by John Gunther. The father of soap operas, schoolgirl complexions and singing commercials is given his zestful due in this lively, anecdoteladen biography of the late Albert Lasker, the most formidable ad anthropos in Madison Avenue history.

Decision at Trafalgar, by Dudley Pope. Memorably above the call of routine historical duty, this is a definitive chronicle of the greatest battle of the age of sail and its ageless hero, Lord Nelson.