New York World Telegram

Norman Nadel - The Theater

 

GRISLY REVUE HAS A MESSAGE

 

To hang a man properly, you divide 512 by his weight in pounds, which equals the distance he is to drop before the rope takes up.  If the drop is too short, he'll merely strangle to death.  If it is too long, his head will be pulled off.

 

The last time this matter was brought to the attention of an off-Broadway audience was in Brendan Behan's "The Quare Fellow," which was set in an Irish prison.  Now we have an entire musical revue dedicated to legalized killing, or capital punishment.  "Hang Down Your Head and Die," which opened last night at the Mayfair Theater, might deal with a grisly subject, but does it with such point, and with such (if you'll excuse the expression) life, that it entertains brikily as it slaps home its caustic social message.

 

It has the physical setting of a circus, including the uniformed band on raised platforms, playing the traditional "Entrance of the Gladiators" as the cast parades on stage when the show begins.

 

However it turns out to be not the entire circus but the clown show - or "clownerie," to borrow the term Joan Littlewood uses to describe her "Oh What A Lovely War," which, like this, is a revue imported from England.  The importer in the case of "Hang" is producer Marion Javits, wife of the senior senator from New York, and a woman with a keen social consciousness.

 

More mordant than morbid, the revue features musical numbers that set the audience swinging.  Gerome Ragni, the white-face clown who eventually becomes the man who is to die, beats out "I Want Gas" ("I want something with class") to a rock 'n' roll rhythm.

 

Michael Berkson, James Rado and Remak Ramsay merrily chant "An Innocent Man Is Never Hanged," as the girls in the company relate instances of executing the wrong person.  Jenny and Jill O'Hara, two absolute charmers, don exaggerated pigtails to sing "Tin Cap" (the one placed the victims' head in an electrocution), as little girls begging their daddy to let them see the executions in the movies and on TV. "Alcatraz," by George Marcy and the girls, is a socko, spell-it-out cabaret production number.

 

The grim humor comes forth in a variety of ways.  After a statement that Utah offers the prisoner a choice, a clown skips across stage, plucking the petals of a daisy as he sing-songs, "hanging, shooting, hanging, shooting...."

 

When it wants to, "Hang Down Your Head and Die" can drop the comedy and shock the audience within an inch of its life.  While describing the electrocution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, narrator Robert Jackson relates that the second shock administered to the man lasted 57 seconds.  Then there is total silence and immobility on stage for exactly 57 seconds - which seem like that many hours.  Terrifying.

 

The show was devised by 23-year-old David Wright while he was attending Oxford; it premiered there before moving into London and earning the London Critics Award as best revue of this year.

 

It is a group presentation, for which most of the company have contributed materials or styles.  Braham Murray, as director and choreographer, must be credited with the crisp, bright tone of the production, as well as held accountable for a few numbers that seem disorganized and inadequately prepared.

 

Obviously, feeling is not going to be unanimous about a revue which deals with hanging, electrocution, shooting, stoning, precipitation from a height, impaling, garroting, lethal gas, genocide, beheading, injection and torture.  Some theatergoers reasonably might ask, "Is this entertainment?"

 

Strangely enough, it is; no one will be bored, even if many are appalled.  More important, it compels its audience, whatever its attitudes, to take another look at the Sixth Commandment.