The Theater: New Musical on Broadway, Oct. 10, 1960

Irma La Douce is small scale and French, piquant and jaunty—a musicalin which everything turns on sex and money and promptly turns intosentiment and make-believe. A prostitute in a dregsy quarter of Paris,Irma gives her love and earnings to a virtuous young law student namedNestor. Growing jealous of her clients, Nestor—using earnings of hisown, and a false beard and spectacles—becomes Irma’s one-man provider,”M. Oscar.” Irma thereupon falls in love with Oscar; Nestor “kills”him, is sent to Devil’sIsland, and escapes so as to be back in Paris in time for Christmas andIrma’s gift of twin sons.

By putting its bad apples at the top of the barrel and its milk of humankindness inside Pernod bottles, Irma La Douce endows its harmless storywith a nice tingle of iniquity, even a certain mixture of sweetness andbite. Now and then the gags and goings-on go sour, or the story droops:Nestor-Oscar, for example, outwears its welcome. But under PeterBrook’s brilliant direction, most of Irma moves remarkably fast, withthe advisable speed of things outside the law and people on thelam—or it kicks its heels with Parisian verve and pertness. MargueriteMonnot’s score has a gay street-music tinniness that can have resonancetoo, as in the rousing wail of From a Prison Cell or the ring andbounce of There Is Only One Paris for That. But it is England’s dark,dynamic Elizabeth Seal in the title role—indeed, as the only woman inthe show—who stands foremost. Without her fresh, bright gifts fordancing and prancing and singing, and her gamine knack for being sinfulyet childlike, Irma might choke a bit on its story and at the same time gohungry for charm.