The plot centers on a minor-league con man who decides to go (somewhat) straight by moving into the legitimate business of juke boxes and music promotion.

He finds three pals, Fatso O'Rear, Brains Berman and Skin Demopoulos, and they scheme to enter the juke-box business ("It's Legitimate").

And in the "Fireworks" number, black light is used to reveal shooting stars and Roman candles as Tilda and John's love affair explodes in song.

Numbers from both the New York and London productions were also restaged on television for The Ed Sullivan Show and the Royal Variety Performance.

It noted that "a team of expensive talent has turned out some lively songs, set them in motion in feverishly paced production numbers and has managed to overcome, at least part of the time, the cheapness of a machine-made book."

It commented that Phil Silvers was cast against type, here playing "the fall guy, the poor sap who ends as the victim.... Betty Comden and Adolph Green have written sprightly lyrics, and Jule Styne has contributed some attractive as well as some ear-shattering tunes.

"[8] According to Stanley Green, the musical had "an average score that is worth the price just to hear Miss Walker describe her life of 'Adventure'".

Here we learn that she, at least, already knows that it's a wonderful marriage, because it's never boring ... then came a Mad Scene - a bolero complete with trumpets pealing out like the band in the Plaza del Toro on corrida day and woodwinds tripping up the scale with the flash of a hundred capes.

production for The New York Times, Ben Brantley wrote that, despite its famous creators, "the show still has the incomplete feeling of a work that never quite meets its own aspirations... A tale of buffoonish gangsters trying to muscle in on the music industry."