Dulcy: A Comedy in Three Acts

by George S. Kaufman, Marc Connelly

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244 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1921

About the author

People note American playwright George Simon Kaufman for many collaborations, including Dinner at Eight (1932) with Edna Ferber and You Can't Take It with You (1936) with Moss Hart.

This theatre director, theatre producer, humorist, and drama critic, known as "the great collaborator," wrote very few plays alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_...

Reviews

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story of a good-intentioned over-enthusiastic but a delightfully foolish girl tries to help her husband in a business endeavor but finds herself in a comedy of errors.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kaufman and Connelly would, following Dulcy, both go on to successful careers. They were members of the Algonquin Round Table and won Pulitzer Prizes. Dulcy, a dull, plodding little play, does not hint at this later greatness.

Dulcy centers on a ditzy wife who repeatedly derails a weekend party with her ineptitude. She’s not a particularly likeable character, and she hasn’t aged well. This is one play that’s best left on the shelf. Not recommended.

ETA: The 1930 film adaptation, Not So Dumb, is similarly forgettable.

[Jack Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the problems of producing small theater is the high cost of production rights. When you're working on a small budget with a small house the last thing a producer wants to do is pay $75+ per performance for the rights to a show. This often leads one to look for theatrical works that are in the Public Domain. In the US this includes everything published before January 1st, 1923. (Thanks to Sonny Bono, the works from 1923 will not enter public domain until 2043.)

When one is looking at theatrical pieces from 1922 and before, the biggest problem is often relevance to audiences today. This is especially true of comedies which rely on moral values as a plot point. Morality changed dramatically after World War II and has continued to change, making many of these early pieces of theater obsolete.

This is not the case with Dulcy. This George S. Kaufman/Marc Connelly comdey is still fresh and lively and the antics of it's scatterbrained title character are still funny 88 years after it was written.

The plot is fairly simple. Dulcinea Smith likes to meddle in the affairs of her inventor/jeweler husband George. She invites a business associate of her husbands, along with his family, for a weekend in their suburban home - along with a few other guests. She then proceeds, completely without knowing it, to terrorize her guest of honor and cause general mayhem. Throw in an ex-convict butler, a flamboyant movie writer and a delusional man pretending to be a millionaire and you have the basic premise of this show.

Dulcy was a popular play, launching the career of Lynne Fontanne and being made into a movie 3 times (1923, 1940 and in 1930 under the title Not So Dumb). The script is available online from Google Books and is well worth reading for students of drama or those who wish to become more acquainted with the dramatic style of literature.

The time period from 1900 to 1942 for theatrical literature is woefully neglected in our schools . . . even universities offering theatrical programs neglect to teach their students the works of this time period. The witty drawing room comedies and dramas of this era may have things about that are passe but the dialogue and structure are some of the best theatrical writing the stage has ever seen. Dulcy is a good example of the best from this era. Kaufman, along with his contemporaries S.N. Behrman, Rachel Crothers, Noel Coward, and Edna Ferber delighted audiences in the 20's and 30's and their plays are still a delight today.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this play much the same way that I love Kaufman's The Royal Family or You Can't Take It with You or The Man Who Came to Dinner. I am not sure why Samuel French let it go out of print or why more theatres don't produce this show, but it's a shame. The script is hilarious with a cast of crazies like you find in outher Kaufman scripts. I would like to single-handedly start a movement to get this script produced SOMEWHERE in the next year!