Word: ninotchka
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...fact, Porter's show is not at all the re-make of Garbo's wonderful film Ninotchka it pretends to be: it is really one long burlesque skit, as its title suggests, recalling the glorious days when our forefathers went to hear Milton Berle or Ed Wynn or Phil Silvers crack jokes that hurt, and pinch backsides that apparently couldn't be. Even in the generally disastrous first act of Silk Stockings--when the scenery is swaying, and the music is too soft when people are singing, and too loud behind them when they're talking--there are moments when...
...lovely as Garbo. But she did more than look good: she brought onto the stage with her an air of graceful authority and confidence that almost managed to give the unhappy crew around her guts enough to say their corny lines and sing their tuneless songs. Unfortunately, as Ninotchka she is the victim of Porter's wretched book; most of the charming little conte the old movie told has been cut away, including the cultivated and charming character of her paramour (played, in the film, by Melvyn Douglas); poor Ninotchka, it appears, has been kept on to provide an excuse...
...Misses Fay and Ware actually don't have to go it alone all the way; at times Cheever makes the puzzling role of Steve Canfield (half charmer, half shyster) coherent, and Ninotchka's infatuation becomes reasonably credible; and as the three Russian stooges, Ivanov, Brankov and Bibinsky (Hail Bibinsky!), Ken Howland, John Kemp and Toby Walker have their moments. They are the real burlesque comedians, and in the scenes that have received some direction, they are very funny indeed. And, as the door-man of the ritzy hotel where capitalism (and Canfield) seduce Ninotchka, Geoffrey Cowan is the only believable...
...major faults are Porter's; if Ninotchka was a successful spoof of the Russians 25 years ago, a lot of its crude anti-Soviet humor (reference is made to an epic "Ode to a Tractor") is only crude today. Someone made an odd choice in selecting Silk Stockings, and perhaps they've done as well by it as anyone could. But the charm of this year's Drumbeats show is all Pat Fay's--and the excitement of the production is in its color and gaiety, not in any substance...
...plot, borrowed partly from a one-act play by Ferenc Molnar and partly from a Wilder-Brackett-Lubitsch movie called Ninotchka (1939), is almost as intricate as the famous secret recipe for Coca-Cola-a beverage that, incidentally, benefits in this film from 108 minutes of effervescent and unmitigated schlock. The hero (James Cagney), who heads up the Coca-Cola operation in West Berlin, dreams of a deal with Moscow's Soft Drink Secretariat that will 1) insinuate the pause that refreshes into the Communist way of life, and 2) install him in London as chief of European operations...