New Musical in Manhattan

Shinbone Alley (book by Joe Darion & Mel Brooks; music and lyrics by George Kleinsinger & Joe Darion) celebrates Don Marquis' reasonably immortal archy and mehitabel. Supreme among literary cockroaches is the archy who typewrote free-verse memos to his newspaper-columnist "boss" by hurling himself head-downwards on the keys (though he could never manage capital letters). Gamest and gamiest of cats is the mehitabel that archy reported on, who insists that she was once Cleopatra and though bedraggled and back-alleyish now, is always a lady and toujours gai. The two friends are an easy pair to feel tender toward, but much less easy to endow with stage life.

For one thing, they must still seem like insect and animal. For another, their story is a problem because actually there is no story. And beyond that, they reflect a very personal, crinkly humorist and constitute a very Volstead Act and vers-libre period piece, the two things meeting in the on-the-wagon Don Marquis who said to a bartender: "I've conquered that goddam willpower of mine. Gimme a double Scotch."

Shinbone Alley makes a brave try, and at intermission still has something of a chance. After that, things go rather un-brokenly downhill; and only a few times all evening--as in a charming duet, Flotsam and Jetsam, or some Eartha Kitt touches as mehitabel--is the Don Marquis strain triumphant. A few other times--as in a revue-sketch scene where mehitabel, as a dramatic-school tyro, suddenly gives the hot-jazz treatment to Shakespeare--Shinbone Alley is attractive show business. And Eartha Kitt. with her feline grace and mannered charm, is frequently mehitabelish, and at the worst gives Kitt for cat. But the show's plotless proceedings have little episodic lift, the score is unexciting and the dancing dated, and Eddie Bracken's archy seems understandably forlorn.

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