"Seventh Heaven"

A critic faced with the task of writing about Seventh Heaven has an almost insoluble problem, since everything in the show is so bad that his review is almost bound to collapse into a dreary recitation of failures. I can think of only one positive comment: this last musical of the current season is probably the loudest in recent years. Unfortunately, volume is a questionable substitute for quality, especially when there is little of value in the music, the book, or the acting of the play.

The score of Seventh Heaven was concocted--written would hardly be the correct word--by Victor Young, whose previous efforts were restricted mostly to background music for motion pictures. His tunes abound with sound effects, including a multitude of blaring trumpet calls and drum rolls, but they make only a momentary impression. Young apparently aimed his songs at the jukebox trade, hoping to have them hammered irretrievably into the memories of the public. After hearing them only once, however, I found that I neither could nor wanted to remember any of them.

The lyrics by Stella Unger are similarly undistinguished. (A representative sample went something like, "I'll fly from the blue horizon/ to the isle of I-love-you.") Miss Unger also co-authored the book, together with Victor Wolfson, basing it on a memorable old tear-jerker of a play which was later made into a movie. The present rehashing of the story about a World War I affair between a chanteuse of doubtful reputation and a Parisian sewer-cleaner has lost most of the pathetic appeal of the original. Instead, the authors introduce a trio of prostitutes for comedy relief, whose constant jokes about the state of business can seldom even raise an eyebrow and much less a laugh.

Some good actors, singers, and dancers might have been able to pull even the mediocre material of Seventh Heaven together into a brisk show, but the musical is just as sadly deficient in these departments as in all the others. Peter Gennaro's choreography seems to have been inspired by one of Ed Sullivan's worst variety programs. His vaudeville approach is particularly apparent in the faulty integration of dances and plot, which sometimes raises the faint suspicion that the dancers got lost in the wrong act.

When Gloria DeHaven and Ricardo Montalban take over from their dancing colleagues, the play shows little noticeable improvement. Certainly, few actors could appear rational in a dialogue such as the serious conversation about atheism which they must carry on in a sewer, but it would hardly be excessive to ask the stars of a musical to be able to sing. As the chanteuse Diane, however, Miss Miss DeHaven reveals only a rather light voice which requires amplification, while Montalban, cast in the role of Chico the sewer-cleaner, is content to speak rather than sing his lyrics. Neither gets much help from the loudspeaker system, which has a tendency to squeal at inopportune moments. That defect, I am afraid, is the only thing which can be improved before Seventh Heaven opens on Broadway.