Happy Birthday by Anita Loos

[After Eight]

Posted: 3/18/13 at 8:19am

It's been a happy time for NY theatregoers.

Happy Hunting, revived at the Musicals in Mufti series this weekend, proved to be a winning, tuneful romp, and a helluva lot of fun.

And now, the always-admirable TACT company has revived a lovely little bauble from the past, Anita Loos's sweet and charming comedy-fantasy, Happy Birthday.

A prim, inhibited librarian enters a Newark bar in search of an unfulfilled longing. There she meets a variety of colorful characters and finds the road to happiness. The play is slow in getting started, but once she starts tippling pink ladies and creme de menthe the play comes to life as fantasy delightfully intermingles with reality, and the laughs come as liberally as the drinks.

Mary Bacon, who did such great work in Happy Now and Harrison, TX, shines again in the role for which Helen Hayes won a Tony Award. The large supporting cast are all wonderful, and the direction is full of imaginative touches.

I was enchanted throughout,and felt alive, a-tingle and aglow when it was over.

After seeing shows like Happy Hunting and Happy Birthday, one can only lament the passage of an age in which authors sought and knew how to provide pleasure for an audience, rather than strive to bore them or irritate them to death with heaping helpings of misery or three-hour trials of pointless prattle.

Autre temps, autres moeurs, I guess.

Alas.