The Commitments is a winsome working-class rock musical that uses Dublin, from streetcar to abattoir, for a stage. Roddy Doyle's narrator-hero, handsome Jimmy Rabbitte, is a prole on the dole determined to make Dublin Soul. He places an ad and through a miracle of clever casting a band, The Commitments, is born, with a singer who's a poor man's (and just as well) Joe Cocker, a backup trio of sarcastic lassies, and a trumpeter named Joey "The Lips" who has them all absurdly Waiting for Wilson (Pickett). In Jimmy's home, it's the King, the Son and the Holy Ghost, but Jimmy takes his soul seriously, and black. And when he makes the eyebrow-raising claim, "The Irish are the blacks of Europe, Dubliners the blacks of Ireland, north side Dubliners the blacks of Dublin," no one's arguing, even if they are a whiter shade of pale. A neighborhood comes alive to its own rhythm in The Commitments. (JB)