Li'l Abner

Having written the book for the Broadway musical based on Al Capp's comic strip featuring the hillbilly world of Dogpatch USA, Panama and Frank did it little service here with a flaccid script, even more flaccid direction, and choreography merely 'based' on Michael Kidd's original. The script, with the inhabitants shaggy-doggily resisting a plan to turn Dogpatch into an atomic testing site, could do with a nuclear blast to liven it up; but the casting is excellent, and the marvellous Johnny Mercer/Gene de Paul songs survive intact.