The Theatre: New Play

My Country. Abie's Irish Rose may be nearing dissolution but its soul goes marching on. Last week it paraded into Chanin's Theatre in an earthy reincarnation called My Country and promptly brought down the house.

In this new glorification of the melting pot, all the trouble starts when Mr. Van Dorn, blueblood, announces a prejudice against the prospect of an Italian daughter-in-law and a Jewish son-in-law. "We gotta get outta this neighborhood!" shouts the agitated aristocrat again and again. He thinks that, by moving, the love of democratic young Americans can be thwarted. Mrs. Van Dorn disapproves of her husband's arbitrary ways. Through her, Playwright William Perlman brings out the salient point that Mr. Van Dorn is not justified in assuming Castilian airs, because, even if the Van Dorns did settle in New Amsterdam in 1614, Mr. Van Dorn himself is capable of earning only $3000 a year, whereas the Blumbergs (pants business) and the Palmieris (fruit business) are in the $20,000 a year class. The seventeenth century Van Dorns had neglected to purchase a farm in the vicinity of Times Square. So, in this bursting century, young love, eventually, has its way and Mr. Van Dorn makes the best of it. The curtain falls upon a happy conglomeration amidst enthusiastic applause.