The revue had a pre-Broadway tryout at the Shubert Theatre in Boston in December 1949 and in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in January 1950. The production opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on January 17, 1950, and closed on February 25, 1950, after 46 performances. The production was directed by Robert H. Gordon and choreographed by Jack Cole (who also performed), with scenic design and costumes by Raoul Pène Du Bois.
The revue contains a few comic sketches involving the way a newspaper is run, the military higher-ups, psychiatrists, and the popularity of the Edith Piaf-style of singing.[3] The dances of Cole and Verdon were a smorgasbord of ethnic styles, his trademark.[1] One dance from the revue was called "The Reason for Divorce is Marriage."
Ziegfeld Follies-style musical reviews were still popular in 1950, but soon afterwards, the introduction of variety shows on television made the theatrical revue almost obsolete.[1]
Brooks Atkinson, in his review in The New York Times, wrote that it was a "mediocre revue in a mongrel style." He praised the sketch work of David Burns ("funny as a grandiloquent literary speaker at an author's luncheon") and Jack Guilford (in a "burlesque of the noble virtue of giving up cigarette smoking"). He especially praised the work of Cole who "has happily designed the choreography with no relation to anything else in the show. Every step and movement in it is bizarre and graphic...Mr. Cole is a superb dancer. He is like a macabre manikin out of a decadent show window...When he dances he is all unearthly fire and flickering motion."[4]
^Banham, Martin. The Cambridge guide to theatre, (1995), Cambridge University Press, ISBN0-521-43437-8, p. 1166
^Calta, Lewis. "Revue Due Tonight Starts Busy Week", The New York Times, January 17, 1950, p. 24
^Atkinson, Brooks. "Alive and Kicking Restores the Revue to the Winter Garden and Presents Jack Cole in Ballet", The New York Times, January 18, 1950, p. 25
