The poetic quality of a film such as Animal Crackers could satisfy the definition of humour if this word had not long lost its sense of integral liberation and detachment from all reality in the mind. But neither is it part of the theatre and for this reason a possible explanation lies within certain successful surrealistic poems. This kind of magic is very difficult to explain, mainly because it is not inherently bound up in the cinema. The first film with the Marx Brothers that we saw over here was Animal Crackers which, although it had been universally acclaimed as being something out of the ordinary, seemed to me to be a device that used the screen to generate firstly a special form of magic which is unattainable in conventional relationships between words and images, and secondly, albeit in a characterised form, a certain level of poetry which is detached from the spirit and which could be described as surrealism. Box office: (201) 376-4343.Artaud on the Marx Brothers By Antonin Artaud 12: Wednesday through Sunday at 8 P.M., Thursday at 2 P.M. "Animal Crackers," produced by the Paper Mill Playhouse, Brookside Drive, Millburn. In its irresistibly wacky way, it winds down to a bittersweet ending that has the Professor flattening the whole company and himself with Flit spray, and they all fall down. Or the Professor's card-sharking caper.Īltogether, the new stage "Animal Crackers" is more tightly structured than the screen version. Try to figure out Spalding's invertedly logical theory on the economic viability of the seven-cent nickel. Kaufman's and Morrie Ryskind's original script and selections from the 1930 film adaptation, which was mostly nonmusical, include one classic Marx Brothers non sequitur and routine after another. Lichtefeld has also come up with snappy, elaborate production numbers, show stoppers all. In what must be a major release after creating the dances for the dour "Secret Garden," Mr.
Michael Lichtefeld's sparkling choreography, which is, throughout, intrinsic to the delirious goings-on, erupts at times in mid-dialogue. Rittenhouse, with skillful comic restraint. In a perfectly giddy supporting cast, John Hoshko has Zeppo's part - Jamison, Spalding's secretary - and Carol Swarbrick acts the ineffable Margaret Dumont role, Mrs. Rittenhouse, a debutante, and Wally Winston, "a tabloid dirt disher." One involves Arabella, the daughter of Mrs. Chandler, the philanthropist, who is really a Czech fish peddler, Abie Cabibble.īefore long, there are three such paintings, counting the original, floating about in and out of the frame, being folded and unfolded in and out of the Professor's baggy pockets.Īdd such duplicitous characters as a pair of wicked sisters Hives, the head butler with a swindler's past, and a couple of "making whoopie" subplots. Rittenhouse is throwing a soiree to welcome Spalding and to unveil a pricey, world-famous oil painting, "The Hunt," which was donated by Roscoe W. Rittenhouse's Long Island manse, smashingly designed by Michael Anania. It is Zeppo, soon to disappear from the brothers' act, the "fourth of the Three Musketeers," as one song goes, who introduces the lunatic three to the terminally social Mrs. Les Marsden (Harpo) follows as the silent Professor of whatever it is he professes to be. Next on is Robert Michael Baker (Chico) as Signor Emanuel Ravelli, a musician who explains, in perfect nonsense, his unaffordable rates for not playing and for not rehearsing. "What? From Africa to here, $1.85?" he protests as he is hoisted on a litter by a pair of Africans in a most anticipated entrance. Spalding, "the noted African explorer," Groucho's most celebrated creation. Consider Frank Ferrante, the leering Capt. The demonic threesome who created a blissful commotion at Goodspeed are gracefully reunited here. The 1928 Marx Brothers musical, the comic anarchists' third and last Broadway show (after "I'll Say She Is" and "The Cocoanuts"), represents the Paper Mill at its freest, with everything going sublimely, ridiculously right, under the light and flowing direction of Charles Repole, who staged the musical's terrific revival at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut last year. NOW that the Paper Mill Playhouse's first musical of the season, "Paper Moon," misguidedly or perhaps just prematurely announced as Broadway bound, isn't, how about "Animal Crackers?" It's raring to go.