If you were commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation to write an American music drama, you would start looking for a play with intense dramatic interest. You would also do well to choose something set in a locale with a musical idiom of its own.

Marc Blitzstein, under a Koussevitzky commission, found these in "The Little-Foxes" by Lillian Hellman, and he calls the product "Regina." The play deals with a decadent, bickering Southern family which breaks to pieces over an unscrupulous money deal. The composer has worked into this a ball with many Southern belles and several appearances of singing and playing Negroes. In general the music effectively increases the tension, though, with a lack of variation in the first act which is exasperating. Many of the arias, particularly those of the sweet, flighty Birdie, are genuine mood pieces, effectively incorporating devices for a Southern flavor. Yet the music lacks the consistency of, say, "Peter Grimes," so that the total effect is one of Blitzstein rather than the South. This is particularly true of the music used by the Negro group. Two of their numbers are beautiful spirituals, but the others lack, at least on first hearing, any Negro quality.

In spite of these criticisms, however, Blitzstein's work is a success, and not only because he shows that an American can write a serious musical which is theatrically effective. The libretto--which he wrote himself--is concise with a welcome absence of trivia. The arias get somewhere and the words are skillfully treated in the music. Only once does he allow himself to be led astray by his social conscience into a long scene in which the Negroes make fun of the gossipping society at Regina's ball.

In its debut at the Colonial, however, "Regina" is not receiving the production it deserves. Costumes, set, and potential singing and acting talent are lavisbly present. Jane Fickens has a good voice and enough unpleasantness for the mean role of Regina, and Brenda Lewis has singing ability and desperation for the unhappy Birdic. The other players seem quite adequate. But Robert Lewis' direction is seriously incpt and gross. Birdie begins too many of her songs lovingly stroking the back of a satin chair. The frollicking little Negro boy is nothing but trite, and Regina's daughter, Alexandra, is far more of a bop fan than a young Southern beauty of 1900. Regina destroys the last and most, effective scene with an interminable haughty posc.

Blitzstein's musical does not need these exaggerated operatic cliches. It is a pity that the present production suffers from such unsophisticated treatment.