The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Jan. 9, 1939

The Merchant of Yonkers (by Thornton Wilder; produced by Herman Shumlin) is Thornton Wilder on a lark. The play, like the word, is rather out-of-date: Wilder has rewritten an old Viennese farce with no thought of streamlining it. The scene of The Merchant of Yonkers is Manhattan in the '80s. but old as the European theatre is the plot of the sweated apprentices who sneak off for a holiday, of their miserly old master (Percy Waram) on the hunt for a wife, and of the obliging Mrs. Fixit (Jane Cowl) who fixes things to suit...

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