Theater: New Musical on Broadway

• Share

Donnybrook! (music and lyrics by Johnny Burke; book by Robert E. McEnroe) is a mixture of Irish sass and sentiment drawn from the movie The Quiet Man. However good-humored, it has a great deal about it of the mixture as before—even of its own Act I in Act II. A prizefighter from Pittsburgh (Art Lund) refuses to put up his fists in clashing with a sneering Innesfree bully over his sister's hand, wins the girl (Joan Pagan) through the cunning of a match maker (Eddie Foy), and at length wins over the brother-in-law in a stage-wide slugfest and floor-roll.

All this makes for much rough talk and romantic warbling, with which Donnybrook! at its best has little to do. Matters perk up when a pub-owning widow (Su san Johnson) sings a lament for a spouse she could not lament less; matters tinkle prettily when the wedding guests toast the bride. Matters are brightest of all by way of Eddie Foy's flings and flashbacks into American vaudeville. When Foy dances on his knees, or his feet seem caught in twisted yarn, or he just sidles off from Ireland and the show, he provides literal footnotes to a great vanishing tradition. But when the show slides back to Ireland and Broadway, all distinction is lost. The doings can be colorfully corny enough, the songs respectably melodious enough, but everything breathes a strictly-for-export Irish air or bogs down in sold-by-the-bottle cheerfulness. Jack Cole's opening dance has style, but it relentlessly sets the style for all the dancing that follows.