For weeks Broadway had buzzed with rumours that playwright Moss Hart, who is being psychoanalyzed, would bring to town a Freudian musical play—a play that would startle the theatre as Doctor Sigmund himself once startled the hospital Then Broadway stopped buzzing and began to huzzah, for Producer Sam Harris delivered Moss Hart's "Lady in the Dark," a $130,000 baby, says "Time"
Moss Hart's play idea is 18-carat. A hardworking editress of a fashion magazine, unhappy despite her enviable job and a devoted married lover, goes to get herself "psyched." With that the play dissolves into a psychoanalytical circus with four revolving rings. The scene shifts from the psychoanalyst's office to the "Allure" office, to the young lady's dreams, and back again. Playwright Hart puts anything on the stage that he wishes—a love affair, sophisticated neuro-drama, fashion parades' farce, musical dream fantasias.
The play is neither quite so good as the idea nor so breath-taking as Broadway's swoon over it. Its dream fantasias are much less outlandish than the dreams any psychoanalyst might encounter in a day's work, sometimes lack sparkle, occasionally grow flatulent, But the whole production, spinning from reality to its not too fantastic reveries on four revolving stages, is lovely to look at and delightful to hear. It has one dream of glamorous evening blue, another gilded dream of an Oriental fairy tale, a glittering dream of a circus that turns into a mild nightmare. It has blandishing music, including a poignant song "My Ship," by the German refugee composer Kurt Weill who scored the productions of "The 3-Penny Opera" and "The Eternal Road", and droll lyrics by Ira Gershwin such as:
The mister who once was the master of two Would make of his mistress his Mrs.
But he's missed out on Mrs. for the mistress is through What a mess of a mishmash this is!
"Lady in the Dark" has swarthy Victor Mature, latest in Hollywood's series of almost outrageously beautiful young men, who appears in every costume the feminine audience could wish, from breech clout to dress suit. Prepossessing young Macdonald Carey is the editress's eventual sweetheart. And Danny Kaye funny as a pansy fashion photographer who in true Cecil Beatonish style photographs a suit of armour with a blue chiffon scarf wrapped around its metal neck and stuffed doves perched on its shoulders. In the circus dream he scores the comic hit of the show with a jabberwockian song consisting entirely of the names of Russian composers"
Ignoring well-known physical data, the critics fell to raving about Gertrude Lawrence's theatrical versatility. In "Lady in the Dark" she does virtually everything but play a trombone solo. She is on the stage almost all the time. Gertie (age 42), who off stage has never been in a m&ychoanalyst's office, runs an emotional gamut from the romanticism of a schoolgirl in her teens to the neurotic distress of a mature young woman, She sings sweetly, does high kicks and jazz steps (though with the years they seem somewhat angularly British). She models as few other women could an array of costumes—from a trig purple suit to a sequined man-killer—that had Designer Hattie Carnegie's telephone ringing constantly on the morning after the opening. Once, in changing costumes, Gertie does the next thing to a strip tease, exposing herself in a cobwebby lace slip.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.