It seems producers, even very successful ones like George Abbott, will never learn that a funny idea and a few dangling gags cannot make a good stage comedy. Mr. Abbott, the producer of the new comedy by Will Glickman and Joseph Stein, should have been able to see that even the two-line jokes were infrequent and that the basic humorous situation in the play was written completely without the writers' consulting their hearts. The results is a painfully strained, unoriginal, play about some people who are either incredibly stupid or plain contemptible.

Mrs. Gibbons is the widowed mother of three grown boys, two of whom are in jail and the other on probation. As the play opens, she is being proposed to by a gentleman who has been a trusty employee of the Gas Company for the past 25 years. He is surprised (through this member of the audience was not) when at the end of the first act the two jailed sons break in through the living room window and wreck mother's chance of re-marriage. Mother, throughout the play, believes her boys to be angels, and the victims of bad company, bad luck and a drunken judge.

The timid suitor is held captive by his almost stepsons during Act II. At the end of the act a policeman finally comes in, and sweet, lovable Ma is forced to use some Judo on him which on of the sons has taught her. As the officer lies stunned on the floor, the second act curtain descends with Ma sighing, "A mother's work is never done."

There were several times during the evening when I thought "Mrs Gibbons' Boys" might save itself by turning into a complete farce. Unfortunately, it never did. The character of the mother, as played by Lois Bolton, is frequently pathetic: she is not insane, (as say, the two sisters in "Arsenic and Old Lace,") but is obviously genuinely in love with her sons. She is thrilled to have them back home even if it means a jail-break, and she is also quite serious about her Gas Company beau.

The three sons and one of their criminal pals they bring home are some of the most loathesome characters I've encountered in a comedy. Their one redeeming feature is that they do seem to have affection for their mother. This hardly outweighs the rudeness with which they treat her suitor on-stage and the crimes they have committed off-stage. Even as criminals, they are not very interesting, and the "tough-guy with the one soft spot" angle has never amsued me. I think it may be that I have more concern for their mother than they do. I know I don't share Mrs. Gibbons' attitude (and the writers') towards her three juvenile delinquents, Ma Gibbons' love-blindness, the probable cause of their disrespect for the law, seems to me to be tragic rather than comic. What the hell are you laughing about, Mr. Abbott?