Vote Yes

In my last entry - On Stage - I mentioned a review for the stage version of The Vagabond King that must have been sent to the UK by Dennis. I think you will agree that my father is unlikely to have got it from a UK publication. It was written by McHarg Davenport:

Should you as a Long Island Playgoer be called upon this month to vote on the proposition, "Shall We Get Seats For The Vagabond King"?, take a tip from this reviewer and mark your ballot "Yes". Then phone your ticketlegger, Tyson, McBride or whoever it is that looks after you, and get the best he has regardless, for really good seats are hard to get even now and by the time the Holidays roll around, anything nearer than the tenth row will be worth its weight in coal.

In our poor but honest opinion, Russell Janney's production offers the best evening's entertainment to be found in New York at this writing, and we hope it will run at the Casino for at least six years, or until our son David turns ten and is ready for such grown-up distractions.

Justin Huntley McCarthy's "If I Were King" furnishes the plot, the action of which is laid in Paris in the time of Louis XI and deals with certain highly colorful and fantastic adventures in the life of the poet Francois Villon. Despite the fact that most of the characters are thieves, cut-throats and other nameless male and female scum of the underworld, it is a clean-spoken play and a mighty refreshing one.

A play "with music", The Vagabond King boasts a number of outstanding melodies by Rudolph Friml, any one of them worth trekking in by foot from Montauk Point to hear. Villon's "Song of the Vagabonds" is the best of the lot and when Dennis King and his fine male chorus really let themselves go, they all but carry the audience over the footlight and out to defend the gates of Paris with them.

Like all songs ending with "To Hell with somebody!" this one has the magic when properly sung to make the veriest handful as irresistible as any Army Corps, and Heaven help France and the unknown Spanish soldier, if the Riffs get hold of it!