Theater: Strictly for the Gypsies

Bajour. If it strikes a playgoer that there is something terribly funny about bilking a lonely, gullible widow out of some insurance money, then this musical is his to enjoy. Otherwise, it is strictly for the gypsies.

A Manhattan clan, headed by a Guys and Dolls-type gypsy, Herschel Bernardi, needs to raise an $8,000 bridal fee to purchase a spitfiery West Side Story-type gypsy girl (Chita Rivera) for his son. The girl is so keen for the match that she stages a bajour (Romany for swindle) and cons the widow for the money. A subplot has the widow’s daughter living in with the Bernard! bunch to research a Ph.D.

The rainbow-clad company whirls through its paces like a hurricane at a remnant counter. Chita Rivera is a one-woman atomic pile, and her dances are radioactive. The book is carefully thought out, and if the music is merely passable, the lyrics are intelligent.

It is all to little avail. Bajour wants to be offbeat and manages only to be off key. When a group of vagrants camp fifty to the square foot in a deplastered slum store and trumpet that they intend to steal New York blind, the $9.60 ticket buyer is bound to speculate wryly that he may be the next victim. And even if he is filled with escapist envy for the gypsy’s irresponsible lot, his conscience, drummed by a thousand pleas, dampens his delight. In the climate of today’s opinion, play-gypsies-play translates into the specter of migrant urban nonworkers, who are just about as amusing as migrant agricultural workers, and everyone knows how funny they are.