DRAT!
 |
| Gary Gage, Bonnie Franklin, Carol Swarbrick, Jane Connell. |
"In Lieu of Reviews"
Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE
is pleased to provide instead accounts of previous theatre
seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for theatre-hungry readers. If you'd
like to know the background on how this previously unpublished series came to
be and what its relationship is to my three The Encyclopedia of the New
York Stage volumes (covering every New York play, musical, revue, and
revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the prefaces to any of the entries
beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at the end of the current entry.
DRAT! [Musical/Alcoholism/Homosexuality/Family]
B/LY/D: Fred Bluth; M: Steven Metcalf; L: Richard Nelson; P: Theatre 1972; T:
McAlpin Rooftop Theatre (OB); 10/18/71 (1)
An unhappy product of the Goodspeed
Opera House in Connecticut, this spoof of the Victorian booze-to-beatification
melodrama The Drunkard could not walk
a straight critical line and was given the bum’s rush after a single
performance. The “pathetically inept” show (Richard Watts) had a plot about a
good family man, Eddy Applebee (Walter Bobbie) who turns into a wino, deserts his wife, Sally (Bonnie
Franklin), and little girl, Poppie (Donna Sands), and after near collapse is salvaged by the Salvation
Army. The book “simply refuses to be funny,” groaned Watt.,
Among the features that fell flat were
the depiction of the hero’s gay brother (James [Red] Welcher) and two
characters obviously modeled on W.C. Fields (Gary Gage) and Mae West (Carol
Swarbrick). “They have mucked up the play from beginning to end,” griped Martin
Gottfried. Clive Barnes strongly objected to this “opus . . . presumably
spelled D-R-E-C-K. It had all the taste of a wedding staged in a funeral
parlor.”
Drat! was crammed
with sexual innuendo, said several critics, and abounded in “coy allusions to
homosexuality,” noted Gottfried. “It is the nastiest, the most unclean, the
most prurient show in town,” added Barnes. Edith Oliver’s notice contained all
of 15 words: “A dirty little musical put-on called Drat! also opened last week. It doesn’t matter where.”
Previous entries:
Abelard and Helo/ise
Absurd Person
Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats”
and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came
Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon
Drinks a Little
And They Put
Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little
Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green
Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The Au Pair Man
Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L.
Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster
The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker
La Carpa de los Raquichis
The Carpenters
The Castro Complex
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Changing Room
Charles Abbott and Son
Charley’s Aunt
Charlie Was Here and Now He’s Gone
Chemin de Fer
The Cherry Orchard
The Chickencoop Chinaman
The Children
Children! Children!
Children in the Rain
Children of the Wind
The Children’s Mass
A Chorus Line
The Chronicle of Henry VI: Part 1, Part
II,
The Circle
Clarence Darrow
Cold Feet
Conditions of Agreement
Coney Island Cycle
The Constant Wife
The Contractor
The Contrast
The Constant Wife
The Country Girl
Crazy Now
The Creation of the
World and Other Business
Creeps
The Crucible
Crystal and Fox
Cyrano
Dames at Sea
The Dance of Death
Dance wi’Me/Dance with
Me
A Day in the Life of
Just about Everyone
Dear Nobody
Dear Oscar
The
Desert Song
Diamond
Studs
Different
Times
The Dirtiest
Show in Town
The
Divorce of Judy and Jane
Do It
Again!
Doctor Jazz
A Doll’s
House (2)
Don Juan
Don
Juan in Hell
Don’t
Bother Me, I Can’t Cope
Don’t
Call Back
Don't Play Us Cheap!
Don't Play Us Cheap!
