Actress Is Moving as Hanna's 'Lady

By Peter Bellamy It has been said of Nancy Kelly that she has a low, tremulous, passionate voice that bursts out of emotional shackles to touch the heart.

This distinguished, much honored actress again proves the truth of this tribute to her as the star of the Neil Simon drama "The Gingerbread Lady," which opened a week's engagement last night at the Hanna Theater.

In the play she enacts the role of an alcoholic, self-destructive, famed popular singer. The character's talent, quick mind and wit are as overwhelming as her thirst and nymphomania. The contrast between her potentialities and her tragic failures suggests Judy Garland and "Over the Rainbow."

LIKE AN insecure child she is afraid of the dark and to be alone. She is a failure as a mother, wife and individual and her nerves are at the breaking point after 10 weeks in the alcoholic ward. She is routinely profane and vulgar.

Yet she is so charming and lovable that one keeps hoping against hope that she can conquer alcoholism. Miss Kelly is all of these things and can make you laugh and bring a big lump to your throat. She acts even when she has no lines.

Involved with "The Gingerbread Lady" in a New York apartment are her

1

17-year-old daughter who hopes to save her, an unsuccessful homosexual actor, a woman in love with her own beauty and a youthful, of-

fensive stud.

ALTHOUGH THE characters in the play are all too unpleasantly identifiable, the laughter is constant. Simon has given the play some of his most bitterly funny lines. The laughter is mixed with gall and wormwood.

Most of the characterizations are brilliant, although some of the witty conversation and plot development is contrived.

The title of the play comes from the daughter's that her remembrance

mother reminds her of the lady in the window of a gingerbread house her mother gave her for Christmas.

MICHAEL LOMBARD is the more moving as the

homosexual actor because one realizes that if his emotional makeup were different, he and the singer could have a lasting, rewarding relationship.

Maureen Silliman, as the daughter who tries to play mother and disciplinarian to Miss Kelly, is most appealing. Mimi Bensinger is true to life as a woman so in love with her own body that her husband can't possibly compete with her selfadulation.

Michael Fairman as the stud is an admirable loathsome indication of how low the singer will descend for sexual satisfaction and reassurance. Manuel Sebastian as the delivery boy is a teen-age rascal in training.