The Theater: New Show on Broadway, Oct. 19, 1959

At the Drop of a Hat is the two-man “afterdinner farrago” that ran in London for 759 performances. The two men are Michael Flanders, who is vivacious and bearded and sails about in a wheelchair, and Donald Swann, who is mousy and bespectacled and stays put at the piano. Flanders wrote the words for the songs they sing, Swann the music. Flanders also does the talking between songs, which is now and then at Swann’s expense. The two of them are notably British yet notably themselves—casual and informal, yet with the timing of the solar system and the teamwork of the Lunts. Altogether, they are as engagingly funny a pair as any nation need ask for or any theater season expect.

Sharply satirical one moment about political figures or popular songs, Flanders and Swann are gaily whimsical the next about animals (their specialty) or plants in love. Their tone is sophisticated; they never spell words out, and use many that are foreign. Their joking is educated, with here a lurking bit of Wordsworth, there a pun on Kyd. They can be most lively when most deadpan, and most deadly when most daft. But their triumph rests on their total effect. Delightful as their songs can be (one is about an Oxford-bred cannibal who no longer likes eating people), the evening would grow a bit becalmed were it not for Flanders’ animated patter. And winning as his patter can be—not least his account of the London theater season of 1546—it might prove wearisome were it not for his superb technique: the lines he throws away, the jokes he holds his nose at, the changes of pace, the changes of face, the alarming sounds in his throat. If Flanders’ way is to be sinuous, mocking and charming, Swann’s way is to play everything straight, then suddenly seem straight out of Edward Lear. He is as repressed and colorless as a don, then as vaultingly mad as Don Quixote. Their combined way has given Broadway its gayest evening since La Plume de Ma Tante.