New Musical in Manhattan

The Boy Friend (book, music & lyrics by Sandy Wilson) may very well prove the surprise hit on Broadway that it was in London. A gay, witty spoof of musicomedy during the '20s, it manages to hold up all evening by lacing its burlesque 'with nostalgia. It also avoids dangerous pitfalls by sticking to the musicals of the '20s and not going after the mores.

Though they had speed and blare at times as well as sappiness, those musicals were in general the ladyfingers of an age of hooch. The scene of The Boy Friend is a British-flavored bit of the Riviera, the romance is between two frightfully rich young things (Julie Andrews and John Hewer) who represent themselves to each other as awfully poor. "I could be happy with you," they duet, "if you could be happy with me." Between whiles, girls wearing frocks with waistlines near their shins mince about squealing genteel idiocies ; everybody makes remarks of a piercing obviousness; couples tango and Charleston and go in for every form of jazz-age contortions.

The Boy Friend cannot help seeming a little thin and repetitious in spots. But for the most part it is not only amusing but appealing. Playwright Wilson, who is too young to have seen what he writes about except from his pram, plainly loves the thing he kills, fondles every last insipidity and cliche and gives them a kind of nitwitted charm. He is well served by the production and in particular by pretty, 19-year-old Actress Andrews. Very funny as a mincing, mousy-blonde ingenue, she is yet—without ever stepping out of character—an extremely winning and attractive girl.