Lullaby Book

THE STORY: Johnny Horton, a truck driver, runs away from home at the age of 38. He elopes to Scranton with Eadie Jackson, a brassy cigarette girl, whom he has met and married all inside of three days. He has done so in an effort to break away from his dominating mother. Eadie has been around quite a bit in her time, and it is during the honeymoon night that the realization comes to her that she has married a shy, awkward Herculean man who is nothing more than a momma's boy. The mother in the meantime has discovered Johnny's whereabouts and comes after him in an effort to avoid what to her would be a catastrophe. She arrives at their hotel the morning following their wedding night, and after threatening to have a heart attack, to jump out of window and to go to an old ladies' home, she is finally forced to concede the marriage. She manipulates the young couple into coming home to live with her. Eadie is reluctant to do so, but for Johnny's sake, agrees, hoping that it will all turn out for the best. From here on, the play concerns itself with the mother's machinations to get herself reinstated into their apartment, splitting the couple into separate bedrooms and finally almost breaking up the marriage completely. How she is outwitted by Johnny, and the manner in which the couple finally go off to a place of their own, is told in the most hilarious fashion. ‚¬¦a hilarious adventure. Mr. Appell has a knack for vernacular and also for incongruous situations‚¬¦almost straight farce and thoroughly convulsing. - NY Times.