Donnybrook

The reasons for a musical’s failure on Broadway can often be as unforeseeable and numerous and as there are reasons why some often inexplicably become hits. Despite how sweet the singing and how smart the staging, the Irish Repertory Theatre’s revival of the 1961 musical Donnybrook! at the Irish Repertory Theater (of all places), there is otherwise very little evidence to explain why this dalliance into musical theater by popular composer-lyricist Johnny Burke and his book writer Robert E. McEnroe was deemed worthy of resurrection.

Following on the heels of last season’s more deserving Irish Rep. revival of New Girl in Town, Donnybrook! certainly supports the notion that taking a fresh look at some forgotten shows is sometimes worth the trouble. If there is a lost treasure to be unearthed, however, this isn’t one. Basing their show on the film (and short story by Maurice Walsh) The Quiet Man, the musical’s collaborators should have known from the start that the adored and hugely popular 1952 film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara would be a hard act to follow. It was and it proved to be Burke’s only Broadway score.

Punchy as are its displays of Gallic humor and predictable are its dramatic devices, Donnybrook! nevertheless tries hard to stand on its own as a boisterous musical comedy, sometimes succeeding with the dancing, boozing and the brawling. It also offer proof, however, that the talented Burke was a little out of his comfort zone despite his fame primarily as a Hollywood-based (Paramount Studios) lyricist, and where he mostly shared the song-writing honors with his composer of choice Jimmy Van Heusen.

It is interesting that this revival interpolates three lovely standards by Burke and Van-Heusen including “It Could Happen to You” and “But Beautiful” to beef up an otherwise merely pleasant score. Purists will gripe about why liberties have been taken with the original score, while others will simply say how nice it is to have a hit tune or two where you need one even though the two cited above seem to be almost arbitrarily inserted.

Although there is nothing remotely inhospitable or standoffish about either the songs or the romantic or mischievous shenanigans, there is nothing about this show that says it needed to be afforded the loving attention given it. Much credit does go to director Charlotte Moore and choreographer Barry McNabb for stirring up a bit of the old sod on the Irish Rep’s small stage.

A fine cast of supporting players doing yeomen work not only by sparking up the action right from the start with the jaunty “Sez I” with some bracing step dancing, but also by assisting with the transitions to various locations as they appear courtesy of a turntable in designer James Noone’s evocatively accommodating settings.

Donnybrook! is story of John Enright (James Barbour) a professional Irish-Yankee pugilist who has hung up his gloves after he killed a man with a punch during a bout in the USA and decided to never to fight anyone again. Seeking to give himself a fresh start, he returns to his native Inisfree in Ireland where he is not only goaded into a fight with the fierce, feisty and passionate (yes, all three) Mary Kate Danaher (Jenny Powers), the woman he instantly falls for and intends to marry, but with her belligerent, bullying, and domineering (yes, all three) brother Will Danaher (an excellent Ted Koch).

Of course, there’s also a fight a brewing over Mary Kate’s dowry that becomes show’s biggest contention as well as the big, but also rather silly and protracted fist fight (hence the play’s title) between Sean and Will that serves as the show’s climactic showdown as in an old western.

The fight also brings together the show’s secondary couple — the town shrewdly impish matchmaker Flynn (Samuel Cohen) and the town’s richest widow/pub owner Kathy Carey (Kathy Fitzgerald). It is their comically contrived relationship that provides the most entertaining portion of the show. It’s wonderful to see how crisply Fitzgerald and Cohen keep their character’s dancing feet and vaudeville-like personas in high gear, notably during a scene in which the gullible Kathy Carey almost falls for Flynn’s matchmaking deviltry in a delightful duet “I Wouldn’t Bet One Penny.”

Barbour has some choice opportunities to fill the theater with the sound of his vibrant baritone voice especially in his grandiose “Soliloquy/A Quiet Life.” His duets with the beguiling and lovely red-haired Powers, s melodically engaging are his duets with the beguiling and lovely red-haired Powers, while engaging, also reveal egregiously stiff, expressionless acting. We are grateful for the snap and verve that Powers puts into the Mary Kate’s affections for Sean. She has her shining moment singing the wishful ballad “When Is Sometime,” even though that song, the third from the Burke and Van Heusen songbook, was written for the Bing Crosby film A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

To be sure, the stage at the Irish Rep isn’t going to suggest the green and rolling countryside of the Emerald Isle in 1951 as did the film. But you can feel the fresh breeze that prods the flinty and folksy characters to life that comes from the four fine musicians, under the direction of John Bell, huddled in the corner of the stage. Whatever its shortcomings (including, I presume, some extensive pruning of the original to bring it in under two hours), I would still bet more than one penny that aficionados of obscure musicals are certain to make a bee-line for the Irish Rep.

Donnybrook!
Music and lyrics by Johnny Burke
Book by Robert E. McEnroe
Directed by Charlotte Moore

Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street.
(212) 727 – 2737
Tickets: $55-$65
Performances: Wednesdays at 3pm and 8pm; Thursdays at 7pm; Fridays at 8pm; Saturdays at 3pm and 8pm; and Sundays at 3pm.
From: 02/07/13 Opened 02/17/13 Ends 03/31/13
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 02/14/13