The Theatre: New Revue in Manhattan, Jul. 30, 1951

Two on the Aisle (music by Jule Styne; lyrics and sketches by Betty Comden & Adolph Green; produced by Arthur Lesser) can smile gratefully at its stars, Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray. Lahr remains among the best of the oldtime funnymen, and there are virtually no new ones. He has a nice comic face, he can make nice comic faces. He has a showman’s sixth sense; his antics have authority. Best of all, he can lose his head splendidly when all about him are stodgily keeping theirs. As Captain Universe, leading the Space Patrol in a piece of stupendous interplanetary science fiction, as

Wagner’s—or not quite Wagner’s—Siegfried, as T. S. Eliot’s—or not quite T. S. Eliot’s—”close friend” of the family, Lahr is always happily himself.

Dolores Gray, back on Broadway after wowing London for three years in Annie Get Your Gun, is a good showman too, and a very fetching singer. With a voice as hearable as it is husky, she rolls out Give a Little, Get a Little Love, rat-tat-tats the lyrics of a crisp patter song, If You Hadn’t, but You Did.

Mr. Lahr and Miss Gray can smile a trifle sadly at Two on the Aisle. Its skits are the show’s main virtue, and even some of them should work shorter hours. But Sketch Writers Comden & Green (On the Town) have really satiric minds, and at their best are very funny. Elliott Reid is funny, too, in a take-off of the Kefauver committee hearings. The music is all too thin, however; the dances are dullish, the production numbers mostly colorless. But thanks to its stars, a rather negligible revue still manages to be a very pleasant evening in the theater.