"Three to Make Ready"

Untopical like most revues, themeless like some, and extravagant like all that hope to attain box-office success, "Three to Make Ready" contains some highly amusing dancing by Ray Bolger, plushy but tasteful sets by Donald Oenslager, bright music by Morgan Lewis, and a few interesting but mostly pointless skits, directed by Margaret Webster on an off day.

Awaited as the successor to the similar and successful "One for the Money" and "Two for the Show," Stanley Gilkey and Barbara Payne's inevitable third in the series has some good ideas, but is still too close to the dress-rehearsal stage to have achieved the pace and polish that a review needs for Broadway. Luckily for "Three to Make Ready" and for New York, Broadway is not its next stop.

The show is now going through a period of editing which, it is to be hoped, will spare such sketches as "Barnaby Beach," "The Old Soft Shoe," and "Kenosha Canoe" from the ravages of the blue pencil and will shelve some others that suffer from the sins of humorless vulgarity and the punchless obvious.

"Three to Make Ready" appears to have a young, spirited cast and management as yet unjaded by the box-office. With the show's basic ingredients--good music, dancing, and production--the troupe, sparked by Mr. Bolger's whimsical mimicry and Jane Deerings delicate dancing, can be counted on to smooth out something that at present can be entirely enjoyable only after a few drinks. jgt.