DONNYBROOK! – Original Cast Recording (Stage Door Records – STAGE 9054)
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
The latest release from Stage Door Records is a 1961 Broadway musical based on the 1933 film The Quiet Man by Johnny Burke and Robert E. McEnroe.
The story centres on John Enright (played by Art Lund), an Irish-American ex-prize fighter who, having accidentally killed a man in the ring, returns home to Ireland to lead a quiet life in the small town of Innesfree. He falls in love with Ellen Roe (Joan Fagan) but is forced to participate in a wild brawl to prove his courage before he can win her hand.
The show only lasted 68 performances but has lived on thanks to its quite delightful score. A cross between Brigadoon and Finian’s Rainbow, the story doesn’t really seem to lend itself to musical comedy but, on reading up on the first night reviews, it appears that Eddie Foy (playing the comedy character) went off-book quite a bit throughout the evening trying to corpse the other actors on stage with him – and, according to reports, succeeded in his quest – I am sure that didn’t help this otherwise romantic tale.
However, taking the score into consideration, we have a lovely lyrical mixture from exuberant numbers such as ‘Sez I’, ‘Donnybrook’, ‘The Loveable Irish’ and ‘Wisha Wurra’ to comedy numbers such as ‘Mr Flynn’ and ‘I Wouldn’t Bet One Penny’ to the lovely ballads ‘The Day The Snow Is Meltin’, ‘Ellen’, ‘He Makes Me Feel I’m Lovely’ and the beautifully poignant but humorous ‘Sad Was the Day’.
The CD is a compilation of the original cast recording and then 14 of the 17 songs played by The Pete King Orchestra. The cast of the musical includes: Art Lund, Joan Fagan, Eddie Foy, Susan Johnson, Philip Bosco, Sibyl Bowan and Grace Carney. Lund and Johnson, of course, having had a huge success five years earlier in The Most Happy Fella.
This is one cast recording that many will never have had in their vinyl collection but now, thanks to the sterling efforts of Stage Door Records, you can have it in crisp clear remastered CD quality.
Nick Wakeham
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