Theater: The New Broadway Season

AS the new theater season begins to glow, a number of interesting prospects for 1968-69 stand out:

MUSICALS

ALL ABOUT EVE. Actress claws her way Up—as in the memorable 1950 Bette Davis movie.

A MOTHER’S KISSES, by Bruce Jay Friedman. From the novel about how not to be a Jewish mother.

AND NOW, NOEL COWARD, with George Grizzard, Dorothy Loudon and Arthur Mitchell. More then than now: songs by the master of urbanity.

BILLY. Melville’s Billy budding as a musical confrontation between good and evil.

CANTERBURY TALES. The Wife of Bath and other Chaucerian tales set to medieval rock.

COCO, with book by Alan Jay Lerner (My Fair Lady), music by Andre Previn, the Hollywood tunesmith. Costumes and sets by Cecil Beaton. Starring Katharine Hepburn. Couturière Coco Chanel and the Beautiful People of 1938-54.

COME SUMMER, directed by Choreographer Agnes de Mille. Two men and a farm woman search for eternal summer in 19th century New England.

DEAR WORLD. Music by Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!). Starring Angela Lansbury, the Mame dame. Giraudoux’s Madwoman of Chaillot sets off to destroy the wicked.

ELMER GANTRY. Sinclair Lewis’ roué evangelist making miracles.

HER FIRST ROMAN, based on Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra. With Richard Kiley and Leslie Uggams.

MAGGIE FLYNN, with Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy. Can an orphanage director find happiness with a circus clown?

PROMISES, PROMISES, by Neil Simon (The Odd Couple). Starring Jerry Orbach, the frenetic schnook from Scuba Duba. Directed by Robert Moore, who staged the off-Broadway hit The Boys in the Band. Stage version of the movie The Apartment.

THE EXCEPTION AND THE RULE, adapted from Brecht by the West Side Story team, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. Directed by Jerome Robbins and starring Zero Mostel. Oilmen race across an Asian desert.

THE FIG LEAVES ARE FALLING, by Comedian Allan Sherman. Husband, 42, falls for girl, 22—but picks himself up and sticks with his wife.

LOVE MATCH, with English Comedienne Patricia Routledge. Victoria loves Albert.

ZORBA. Music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret). Directed by Harold Prince and starring Herschel Bernardi. The Greek, as in the movie.

DRAMAS

BOX and QUOTATIONS FROM MAO TSE-TUNG, by Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Box, a monologue on art and life by the offstage voice of Ruth White, comes first and last. In between, Mao Tse-tung delivers Communist platitudes from a boat deck.

LES BLANCS, by the late Lorraine Hansberry (Raisin in the Sun) and edited by Ossie Davis. Life and death in an African hospital.

MORNING, NOON and NIGHT, by three young American playwrights: Israel Horovitz, Terrence McNally and Leonard Melfi. No connection with James Gould Cozzens’ new novel of the same name. Three one-acters: Morning (four Negroes turn white), Noon (white sexual mores), and Night (two funerals: a dog’s and a man’s).

THE CUBAN THING, by Jack Gelber (author of The Connection, director of The Kitchen), with Rip Torn. Gelber will direct this one too. A Cuban family amid Castro’s revolution.

HADRIAN VII, by Peter Luke, with British Actor Alec McCowen. Adapted from novel by Frederick William Rolfe. A seminary reject becomes Pope.

FIRE! by John Roc, pseudonym for a new American playwright. An allegory about angst.

THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, by Howard Sackler, with James Earl Jones. Loosely based on the life of the first Negro heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson.

THE DARK. Harold Prince directs again. A thriller that is both dramatically melo and physically meta.

THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH, by Robert Shaw, who played Henry VIII in the movie Man for All Seasons. Starring Donald Pleasence. Playwright Harold Pinter directs. A surrealistic shocker about expiation and an Eichmann-like character on trial in Israel.

WE BOMBED IN NEW HAVEN, by Joseph Heller (Catch-22), with Jason Robards and Diana Sands. An antiwar play. A Yale production bombed in New Haven last December.

COMEDIES

A WAY OF LIFE, by Murray Schisgal (Luv), starring Lou Jacobi (Don’t Drink the Water). A man in a park, apartment, business office.

BUT SERIOUSLY, by Screenwriter Julius J. Epstein (Tall Story). Screenwriter faces life.

40 CARATS, a French import directed by Abe Burrows. Middle-aged woman loves young man; her teen-age daughter loves “older” man.

JIMMY SHINE, another entry by Murray Schisgal, with The Graduate’s Dustin Hoffman. A young artist’s best friend makes it as a real estate tycoon.

PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM, by Woody Allen, starring same. A movie critic suffers an overdose of imagination.

THE FLIP SIDE, with David McCallum, one of the men from U.N.C.L.E. Two married couples drink and decide to switch partners for the night.

THE GOODBYE PEOPLE, with Milton Berle. Written and directed by Herb Gardner (A Thousand Clowns). Berle is a 72-year-old concessionaire who dreams of reopening his boardwalk frankfurter stand.

THE METEOR, by Switzerland’s metaphysical mystery master, Friedrich Duerrenmatt (The Visit). Paul Rogers (The Homecoming) stars. A dead playwright comes back to life and destroys all he touches.

THE UNNATURAL STATE, by Muriel Resnick, who wrote Any Wednesday. Stresses of modern marriage.

WIND IN THE SASSAFRAS TREE. Lampoon of American westerns.