Full disclosure: I have an aversion to Shirley MacLaine, all the calculated 'please love me' mugging makes me want to go through sick bags the way Billy Bunter goes through cream Buns. On the other hand, I love Jack Lemmon, I love Billy Wilder, so, if I want to see The Apartment, Irma La Douce, I have to take MacLaine. I also love Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields, and Neil Simon both separately and together as here so I finally watched Sweet Charity. Sue me. On the plus side they retained nine numbers from the Broadway score, a score rich in great take-home tunes - okay, they dropped Baby, Dream Your Dream but you can't have everything. MacLaine, of course, is a trained dancer, she started as understudy to Carol Haney in The Pajama Game, got a chance to go on, and the rest, as they say ... So she couldn't louse up the hoofing and even if she could she had Chita Rivera to run interference. More disclosure: MacLaine was half decent, John McMartin was fully decent and even Stubby Kaye's par-for-the-course OTT mugging wasn't too hard to take. A good seven.
Review of Sweet Charity
