New Play in Manhattan

Room Service (by John Murray & Allen Boretz; George Abbott, producer) does for shoestring theatrical producing what Producer Abbott's Boy Meets Girl did for Hollywood and his Three Men On A Horse did for horse racing. It pumps its subject full of fun in veterinary doses. Than this pinchbeck legend of Longacre Square, there is no funnier show in town.

Veteran theatre people and veteran theatre goers will particularly relish the venality, innocence, hope and cynicism of such a character as Gordon Miller (Sam Levene), who once produced a great show on a sidewalk between two No Parking signs and is now trying like a man possessed to produce another from a double room in the White Way Hotel. His initial handicap lies in the fact that he has already run up a bill for $1,200 and is about to be evicted. Lacking costumes and scenery, his cast starving, his author (Eddie Albert) about to be lured by another producer, his backer a jittery character from Wall Street who has just stopped payment on a $15,000 check, Gordon Miller falters but never quite loses his show or his senses of duplicity and humor.

As interpreted by Actor Levene, the leading role of Room Service is a brutal assault on most spectators' funny bones. There is the time, for instance, when he and his director (Philip Loeb) have gone 18 hours without food, the White Way having discontinued room service. Actor Loeb, a master of comic finality, declares that he is seeing spots. "No," he corrects himself, ''it's hamburgers."

"If you see one with onions," asks Actor Levene, "save it for me."

When food is at last sneaked them by a waiter (Alexander Asro) who has been promised a part in their show, Mr. Loeb, after the most voracious eating scene since Mclntyre & Heath in The Ham Tree, amiably suggests that a small part be written in for the chef. In addition to the mortal drolleries of these accomplished comedians, a flanking barrage of laughs is provided by the continual reappearance of a man from the We Never Sleep Collection Agency who is trying to repossess a typewriter, an elk's head which the director loyally refuses to pawn and two stuffed owls. There are also a frantic and shirtless stage manager, a great penultimate fake deathbed scene which keeps Miller and almost everyone else from being taken to jail for fraud and forgery. Critical consensus is that Room Service will be notable for long life as well as long laughs.

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