Beware the Ides of Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Mar 15, 2021 22:01:21 GMT 1
AQUA JAR!™, Indiana Jones, and 1 more like this
Post by AQUA SALZ! on Mar 15, 2021 22:01:21 GMT 1
Really I ought to post about the death of Caesar and save this post for Wednesday. Oh well. But do beware the Ides of March!
Abie’s Irish Rose was a comedy play that ran on Broadway from 1922 to 1927 for 2,327 performances, the most ever in Broadway history up to that point. (For comparison, starting in 1927 Kern and Hammerstein’s Show Boat ran for 572 performances, and that was considered a huge success.)
The public loved Abie’s, the Romeo and Juliet-lite story of a Jewish boy’s marriage to an Irish girl and the allegedly comical complications. The critics, however, loathed it with a passion, writing that the jokes were hackneyed, the characters stereotyped, and the show as a whole horrible.
As the performances and years went by and Abie’s Irish Rose stuck around seemingly forever, wits and critics (categories that, believe it or not, could overlap in the 1920s) took notice. One of the wits was lyricist Lorenz Hart, who wrote (in the song “Manhattan”):Another was Harpo Marx, whose review was rather generous:Harpo was responding to a request for reviews from Robert Benchley, one of the greatest humor writers in the history of forever. Go away and read some of his essays. You have? You’re back? Good, let’s continue. As the drama critic at Life, Benchley reviewed Abie’s Irish Rose every single week—thus his request for guest-reviewers. Of course he loved the play, if you define “loved the play” as “felt about it the way Dracula feels about crucifixes.” Here, in the spirit of the season, are some of his reviews:
His cleverest review of the play was
(King James Version, I should note), but my favorite has got to be
And that’s the story of Abie’s Irish Rose. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! And, after having read this, don’t you think now that you should’ve bewared the Ides of March?!
Oh, and by the way, after Abie’s Irish Rose finally closed in October 1927, playwright Anne Nichols followed it up with a new play. Robert Benchley gave it a glowing review and ended it thus:
Abie’s Irish Rose was a comedy play that ran on Broadway from 1922 to 1927 for 2,327 performances, the most ever in Broadway history up to that point. (For comparison, starting in 1927 Kern and Hammerstein’s Show Boat ran for 572 performances, and that was considered a huge success.)
The public loved Abie’s, the Romeo and Juliet-lite story of a Jewish boy’s marriage to an Irish girl and the allegedly comical complications. The critics, however, loathed it with a passion, writing that the jokes were hackneyed, the characters stereotyped, and the show as a whole horrible.
As the performances and years went by and Abie’s Irish Rose stuck around seemingly forever, wits and critics (categories that, believe it or not, could overlap in the 1920s) took notice. One of the wits was lyricist Lorenz Hart, who wrote (in the song “Manhattan”):
Our future babies
We’ll take to Abie’s
Irish Rose.
I hope they live to
See it close!
We’ll take to Abie’s
Irish Rose.
I hope they live to
See it close!
No worse than a bad cold.
The comic spirit of 1876!
In another two or three years, we’ll have this play driven out of town.
Come on, now! A joke’s a joke.
This department will not be printed next week, owing to the second birthday of this comedy, on which occasion we plan to become ossified.
Closing soon. (Only fooling!)
We refuse to answer on advice of council.
Flying fish are sometimes seen at as great a height as fifteen feet.
Something awful.
Four years old this week. Three ounces of drinking-iodine, please.
We may as well say it now as later. We don’t like this play.
His cleverest review of the play was
See Hebrews 13:8.
(King James Version, I should note), but my favorite has got to be
People laugh at this every night, which proves why a democracy can never be a success.
And that’s the story of Abie’s Irish Rose. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! And, after having read this, don’t you think now that you should’ve bewared the Ides of March?!
Oh, and by the way, after Abie’s Irish Rose finally closed in October 1927, playwright Anne Nichols followed it up with a new play. Robert Benchley gave it a glowing review and ended it thus:
You don’t catch us again, Miss Nichols.