Theater: Disenchanted Evening

Jennie joins Gypsy and Sophie as another of Broadway’s disenchanted evenings devoted to the theme that showbiz is woebiz. The latest musical fictionally disinters the early life and hard times of the late Laurette Taylor on the tank-town circuit, and mopes over her domestic ordeals with an alcoholic, footloose, hot-air impresario of a husband. Amid the encircling gloom, only Mary Martin shines with an inextinguishable light.

The curtain rises on a South Dakota whistle stop with an acting troupe doing a madcap facsimile of 1906 theater fare called The Mountie Gets His Man or Chang Lu, King of the White Slavers. With valiant agility and a good dagger-throwing arm, Mary saves her tiny “bay-bee” from a mountain waterfall, a grizzly bear, and the Oriental devil mentioned in the title. End of fun. Hubby (George Wallace) strands the company and deserts his wife and two kids. An English playwright of exquisite diction (Robin Bailey) begins wooing Mary, though his blood seems to be several degrees below room temperature. But she can’t wash that ring-finger man right out of her hair, not just yet. Hubby has to burn a theater to a crisp and drunkenly clout his little daughter before his charm begins to evade Mary as thoroughly as it has the playgoer.

The Howard Dietz-Arthur Schwartz score induces instant amnesia, except for the perky lilt behind the simpleton lyrics of High Is Better Than Low. Choreographer Matt Mattox’s best dance number, Sauce Diable, seems to have crashed the show from some other musical, and Director Vincent J. Donehue’s overall pacing is poky.

That leaves Mary Martin, which is a magnificent mercy for the more than 100 theater parties that are already committed to go to this threnody. Whether she is nostalgically sashaying through a cane-and-straw-hat routine, or spinning head over heels on a giant Roto-Broil of a torture wheel, or running her voice like a caress over a romantic ballad, she has the star quality that transcends marquees and animates legends. In her bearing, timing, suppleness, versatility, she is a flawless professional. Her only wrong move in Jennie is being in Jennie.