The Theatre: Old and New Show in Queens

Of the 25,000,000 people who visited last season’s New York World’s Fair, over 5.000,000 saw Billy Rose’s glittering Aquacade. The 1940 Aquacade cannot hope to be as much of a novelty, but it is just as good a show. In outline it follows the same formula, but in details Billy Rose has shrewdly changed a lot more than the water in the pool.

No tune this season has the lilt of last season’s Yours for a Song (reminiscent of Johann Strauss’s Tales from the Vienna Woods), and much like last year’s are the smooth water ballets, the adroit diving acts, the custard-pie antics ashore & afloat. But by using scenes from the San Francisco

Fair of 1915, the Paris Fair of 1925, and the Chicago Century of Progress, the new Rose-colored spectacle has much more varied costumes, provides snatches of old tunes, glimpses of past gaiety. By pairing up Waterlulu Eleanor Holm with handsome Swimmer Buster Crabbe, instead of Aqua-caveman Johnny Weissmuller, Rose added oomph to their big aquatic waltz. The water scenes gain from the use of fountains and a “curtain” of shimmering spray.

And the all-gold grand finale, if no more artistic, is less hackneyed than last sea son’s concluding patriotic orgy.

The Streets of Paris, at the Fair, is half the size it was on Broadway, and on the whole a livelier show. Unhappily missing are Dazed Comedian Bobby Clark, “Think a Drink” Hoffman with his magic bar tending, and Carmen Miranda with her tropical lure. But missing also are half a dozen numbers that slowed up the show, while Abbott & Costello are crazier and better than ever. New to the show is Gypsy Rose Lee, with her famous absent-minded striptease. If it doesn’t make up for Miranda, it keeps anyone in the audience-temporarily at least-from thinking about her.