New Musical in Manhattan

Fanny (book by S. N. Behrman & Joshua Logan, based on a trilogy by Marcel Pagnol; music and lyrics by Harold Rome) might have come off far better had it been done on a shoestring. For its very Gallic story of the Marseille waterfront--of a young girl who finds herself pregnant after her sea-crazed lover sails away, and of her marriage to a widower who loves her and craves a child--is a ticklish compound of sentiment and hard sense, of ruefulness and worldliness, that requires delicately simple treatment. As a play enfolded in music, it could be both piquant and touching. As a grandiose spectacle--with undersea ballets, waterfront fandangos and full-rigged ships crossing the stage --the story becomes both sluggish and slapdash. The heaping portion has been substituted for the proper food.

Hence Fanny's merits seem largely incidental. Harold Rome provides a pleasant, sentimental score that also has lilt. As the lover's father, Ezio Pinza is vibrant and masterful, but not once does the great voice of his opera days pour forth. Walter Slezak makes an excellent merry widower; no one middle-aged has more verve, no fat man more avoirdupoise.

But, amid the show's lavish hurly-burly and piling one thing on top of another. Jo Mielziner's sets count for less than his brilliant methods of shifting them. Tamiris has devised some colorful choreography, but it is often so unlooked-for and unneeded as to seem less like a dance than a kind of dividend. Fanny is built like Actor Slezak without being nearly so light on its feet.

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