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| Russel Nype, Donna Curtis. |
LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET [Musical/Crime/Marriage/Period] B/D: Douglas Seale; M: George Goehring; LY: John Kuntz; SC: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel, Lady Audley’s Secret; CH: George Bunt; S/C: Alicia Finkel; L: Lawrence Metzler; P: Haila Stoddart and Arnold H. Levy; T: Eastside Playhouse (OB); 10/3/72-10/8/72 (7)
Previously seen in Baltimore and Chicago, this musical burlesqued a once popular Victorian "sensation" novel that had first been dramatized in 1863 and later was turned into several silent films. It was about paying the piper for such sins as
blackmail, arson, murder, and bigamy, managing to squeeze a good deal of the book
into its musical format. However, lacking a decent score, consistently
intelligent lyrics, and a surefooted comic style, it ended up being “aimless
and basically trivial,” as Clive Barnes judged it. The attractive company could
do little to shore up the faulty structure and it crumbled in a week’s time.
What Douglas Watt dismissed as a “witless and cloying
enterprise” concerns the title character (Donna Curtis), secretly married to
one man, but for reasons of ambition, married as well to an old nobleman
(Douglas Seale, who directed and wrote the adaptation). When husband number one
shows up she kills him and attempts to prevent her secret from emerging. She
goes crazy and dies, but is forgiven by those she's left behind.
This was, said Edith Oliver, “a pain of a show,” although “very
well done indeed.” Nonetheless, it departed in a week. Well-known players quickly out of a job included Russel Nype and June Gable.