Welcome to a new Wildcard Wednesday! This week, I’m sharing the latest in my “potpourri” series on midcentury Broadway plays, specifically comedies, that I’m reading for (mostly) the first time. In this entry, I’ve jumped back very early in the midcentury — to the early 1920s — to spotlight three popular titles that influenced so many ensuing works (even sitcoms)!
THE FIRST YEAR (1920)
Logline: A young couple gets married and has a rough first year as newlyweds.
Author: Frank Craven | Original Director: Michell Smith
Original Broadway Cast: Roberta Arnold, Frank Craven, Lyster Chambers, Maude Granger, Tim Murphy, William Sampson, Hale Norcross, Leila Bennett, Merceita Esmonde
Thoughts: This is one of the oldest plays we’ve looked at so far in this blog series, and by the standard of all those works as a baseline average, The First Year is weak — its characters are vague and fairly one-dimensional, its dialogue is predictable and repetitive, and in terms of comedy, well… it’s much more often cute than funny. However, I want to defend it narratively — for its simple story and basic structure reveals an elemental understanding of craftsmanship that is applicable to any medium and genre — the setup, the centerpiece, the resolve. And it’s so easy in its style that perhaps it may seem unsophisticated to us now, but I think its small, straightforwardness would have been especially appealing in the early 1920s, where plays — even comedies — were only starting to become less ornate. So, there’s a relative casualness here that reads as more naturalistic (for 1920), and that’s enhanced by, again, a very rudimentary plotting that — quality of dialogue aside — is economical and effective, emphasizing this appealing lack of complexity. To that point, I’ve seen modern reviews of this play refer to it as a “situation comedy” — and often to minimize it. Obviously, I don’t support that sentiment — the sitcom is an art form built on reliably strong, specific, inspiring elements of a situation (both character and premise), that this play, frankly, lacks… which would mean, if this was a sitcom, it wouldn’t be a good one. However, to be fair — I get why some make the comparison, for the conflicts in this play have a sense of clear, relatable emotional stakes that speak to the kind of low-concept, everyday situations in which many sitcoms are rooted. Specifically, there have been so many shows anchored by married couples (with or without families), and several of the main scenarios in this play have therefore been employed by a variety of similarly premised series: the business dinner that goes awry, the fight over the old flame, the flight home to mother. It’s actually clichéd how much we’ve seen this kind of fare over the last 100 years, for many sitcoms are indeed premised in the relatable world that this play, with its appealing “smallness” in contrast to others, embraces as its gimmick. Again, this doesn’t register as fresh or as interesting today as it would have in 1920, and it’s also not a great work on technical terms, but there are obvious basics here that are just right — and obviously quite inspiring.
Jackson’s Verdict: Formative but not great compared to better works.
DULCY (1921)
Logline: A daffy woman hopes to help her husband by arranging a marriage for his potential business partner’s daughter.
Author: George S. Kaufman & Marc Connelly | Original Director: Howard Lindsay
Original Broadway Cast: Lynn Fontanne, John Westley, Wallis Clark, Constance Pelissier, Howard Lindsay, Norma Lee, Gilbert Douglas, Gregory Kelly, Elliott Nugent, Harry Lillford, George Alison
Thoughts: With a story anchored by a daffy but well-meaning goof who schemes to help herself and those she loves, there are seeds of Dulcy in many of the great comedic works from the past 100 years, especially in the sitcom genre via great characters like Gracie Allen and Lucy Ricardo, who feel like spiritual descendants on the most basic level — “screwy” wives who similarly cause mounting chaos for those around them as a direct consequence of their clumsy efforts. In fact, Dulcy’s title character, its fulcrum, remains the most compelling element from this nevertheless still-funny 1921 play, which otherwise takes a simple light farce about romantic possibilities and complicates its plot with red herrings (e.g., the Van Dyck confusion) and moments of convenient surprise (e.g., Bill supplanting Starrett as Angela’s real secret paramour) that inevitably weaken its dramatic construction and cheapen its narrative integrity, indulging unmotivated contrivances — all of which feel more hand-of-writer than comedically earned by the characters. However, the play’s clear logline and assortment of personalities, like Dulcy, are solid and straightforward enough in a textbook way to maintain interest in the plot, compensating for the moments when it isn’t as artful or clever as others in this subgenre have proven to be. What’s more, since this is another formative, foundational comedy in our American culture — not just for the sitcom, but in every medium — the fact that Dulcy has so many of its elemental basics correct and is still amusing elevates its appeal and remains a huge reason to celebrate it, both in the context of 1921 and even today. Indeed, Dulcy is a surprisingly charming show overall, with a template that works better than the play itself even knows. Simply put, it’s classic. (That said, take my advice and stay away from the 1940 film adaptation of the same name, which stars another sitcom diva, Ann Sothern; its heavily revised screenplay makes the narrative even more needlessly complicated while straining too hard comedically. The 1930 film version, Not So Dumb with Marion Davies, is much better — and more faithful to the play!)
Jackson’s Verdict: Imperfect but influential and still charming.
ABIE’S IRISH ROSE (1922)
Logline: A Jewish man marries an Irish Catholic girl without the blessing of their fathers.
Author: Anne Nichols | Original Director: Laurence Marston
Original Broadway Cast: Alfred Wiseman, Robert B. Williams, Marie Carroll, John Cope, Mathilde Cottrelly, Bernard Gorcey, Howard Lang, Harry Bradley, and more
Thoughts: Once the longest running play in Broadway history, Abie’s Irish Rose is a foundational text — a comedy about a mixed marriage between a Jewish man and an Irish Catholic girl, along with their respectively prejudiced fathers, who don’t find out about the kids’ union until the middle of the story and then are powerless to stop it, ultimately granting their blessing only after a year has passed and they are both grandparents. We’ve seen versions of this drama told quite often in other places — especially the sitcom genre, for which Abie’s Irish Rose was adapted in the early 1940s on radio (later inspiring TV iterations with the same basic premise, Bridget Loves Bernie and Brooklyn Bridge) — because there’s an evergreen universality to the clash of two different cultures and their accompanying tensions. We’ve also seen this on sitcoms about wealth (Love On A Rooftop), about race (The Jeffersons), and about witchcraft as a metaphor for all the above (Bewitched) — and the template is the same: a marriage brings together two opposing groups of people, who have to learn to adjust to their newfound proximity. Again, it’s typically compelling because that’s what being a member of American society is all about — in this so-called melting pot of ours — and while Abie’s Irish Rose may not be the absolute first example of this common narrative, it’s definitely the 20th century’s most famous, with the most overt homages in entertainment during the 100 years that have followed. Accordingly, I consider it a masterwork, and despite having some of the basic problems that many versions of these stories suggest — specifically, the kids are empty vessels who only exist to enable a conflict between their more comedic and better-defined family members — it’s all okay in the context of this well-written two-hour text, which is still surprisingly funny, and also, though occasionally written in dialect, able to avoid some of the more unpleasant tropes and stereotypes that one might typically be afraid to find in a work from this period. Actually, everyone is treated pretty evenly — okay, we do see more of the Jewish characters than the Irish Catholics (and the Jewish characters are probably allowed to be funnier en masse) — but there’s enough humanity here, thanks to this elementally relatable premise, that it still works. A deserved classic.
Jackson’s Verdict: The 20th century’s premier example of this type of comic drama.
Come back next week for a new Wildcard! And stay tuned Tuesday for more Parks And Rec!