A Critical Look - Page 2 of 7

Drama critic Walter Kerr, then writing for the Herald Tribune, may have pinpointed the primary problem with the original production: "It starts out as a hard-headed, mean-minded musical about a whizz of a kid on the make… and then it cheats. Every so often, every too often, it grabs hold of the very things it means to be satirical about and uses them to make it cozy and cute." The person primarily responsible for this schizophrenia, according to composer Ervin Drake, may have been the show’s producer: "We were deprived of staging a tougher show by the producer, Joe Cates, who felt it would not appeal to the audience of that time. Both the script and the songs were softened and Steve Lawrence's ‘Sammy’ was played fetchingly. The audiences loved him, but we felt the novel had been betrayed." Richard P. Cooke of the Wall Street Journal also recognized that the real Sammy was missing: "Mr. Lawrence was allowed to indulge his vaudeville-TV talents, which are genuine enough but which have little to do with his stage character. It isn’t the first time this expedient has been tried in musicals and it probably won’t be the last. If you’re a Steve Lawrence fan, this may be enough, but it won’t be if you’re not." 

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