The Theater: New Musical on Broadway, Dec. 7, 1959

Fiorello! (book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott; music and lyrics by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick). Despite an exclamation point that gives it the look of an Italian war cry, Fiorello! matches up with La Guardia, telling the story of New York City’s Little Flower from the time he first ran for Congress until his second and successful bid for mayor. The irascibly humane fighting gamecock, whose career, as a matter of fact, has something of the air of a war cry, displays in the theater, as he did on the platform, a naturally theatrical personality. The period through which he moves (about 1916 to 1933) has a persistently gaudy glamour. And out of a dynamic human being and a razzle-dazzle era has come an uneven but lively and enjoyable musical, rewardingly filled with tobacco juice and cigar smoke, rewardingly lacking in tinsel and frills.

As befits an evening of fun, Fiorello! portrays a crusader without ever adopting the tone of a crusade. While pumping lead into ward politics and taking potshots at the Tammany wigwam, it pokes the right touch of fun at Fiorello’s own brandished tomahawk. Winningly played by Tom Bosley, La Guardia proves the more engaging for not being too lovable, the more enlivening for not being too reasonable. And as a period piece that comes up with, among other things, battered Pathe news shots, Fiorello! often has an earned nostalgia.

The straight-shooting Weidman-Abbott book weaves deftly in and out of the song numbers, and the lower they descend for their theme, the higher they mount in effectiveness. The boys in the back room are amusingly kidded in a lilting Politics and Poker; graft is hilariously drubbed in a dittylike Little Tin Box. Even more zipful are a pair of production numbers, a rousing electioneering street dance, and a fine 1920s high-kicking chorus line.

Delightful at its best and generally fun, Fiorello! does have its weaknesses: a few flop songs and scenes, and a less lively second act. The show’s chief liability is that bane of musicals, love, which—requited or unrequited—can seem banal. Even so, the show’s chief asset. Director Abbott’s testing everywhere for pace and pep, helps to shorten the doldrums. And for the evening as a whole, the reaction to the Abbott test is decidedly positive.