New Play in Manhattan

Drink to Me Only (by Abram S. Ginnes and Ira Wallach) is one of those titles that proclaim something farcical while not guaranteeing anything funny. The play is indeed an anything-goes sort of script, and all too much of it goes awry. Perhaps the producers decided not to fret over the script, thinking that the nub of Drink lay in the staging, in what that master of accelerating insanity, George Abbott, could pipe into a yarn of careening drunkenness. Director Abbott and his downer of Scotch, Tom Poston, constitute the brighter side of the occasion. But Drink to Me Only is not an occasion, is not often very bright.

The play concerns a rich playboy on trial for shooting his wife in the backside; his defense is that before the revolver went off, as he was cleaning it, he had drunk two bottles of whisky. After a prosecution doctor testifies that no one could drink that much without passing out, the defense enlists Actor Poston to prove the contrary. And, particularly at the second-bottle stage, Actor Poston shows an amusing gift for exuberant pantomime, as does Director Abbott for moderate pandemonium. But no play can keep from falling on its face just by having the hero continue to do so, and even at its best, even as a jolly intemperance lecture, Drink tends to pall.

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