The Girl from Rector's | |
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![]() Poster for an Australian production | |
Written by | Paul M. Potter |
Date premiered | February 1, 1909 |
Place premiered | Weber's Music Hall |
Original language | French |
Genre | Farce |
The Girl from Rector's is a play written by Paul M. Potter. The play is a sex farce involving several couples in a tangle of adulterous affairs, and was considered indecent by many critics, as well as some government officials who censored performances. It is an adaptation of Loute, a French farce by Pierre Veber. [1] In 1909, producer A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway, where it was a hit.
A play is form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of dialogue or singing between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. Plays are performed at a variety of levels, from London’s West End and Broadway in New York – which are the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world – to regional theatre, to community theatre, as well as university or school productions. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference as to whether their plays were performed or read. The term "play" can refer to both the written texts of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance.
Paul Meredith Potter was an American playwright and journalist, best known for adapting the popular novel Trilby into a stage play.
Pierre-Eugène Veber was a French playwright and writer.
New York rake Richard O'Shaugnessy is having an illicit affair with a woman he knows by the name "Loute Sedaine". When O'Shaugnessy's cousin asks for help with charming Marcia Singleton, a high-class young woman visiting from Battle Creek, Michigan, O'Shaugnessy decides she will be a more favorable partner for himself instead of for his cousin. He informs his mentor, known to him as "Colonel Tandy", that he will marry Singleton and break off his relations with Sedaine. He also severs ties with Tandy, whose assistance he no longer needs.
Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek rivers. It is the principal city of the Battle Creek, Michigan Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which encompasses all of Calhoun County. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 52,347, while the MSA's population was 136,146.
When he arrives in Battle Creek, O'Shaugnessy discovers his rude dealings with Sedaine and Tandy were a mistake, because "Tandy" turns out to be a false name used in New York by his new fiancée's father. Similarly, "Sedaine" is also from Battle Creek, where she is the wife of a local judge. In a complication borrowed from the French original without regard to its implausibility in American law, O'Shaugnessy and Singleton have already wed in a civil ceremony, but need to go through a religious ceremony to complete their marriage. The joint arrival of O'Shaugnessy's lover and his mentor threatens to disrupt this plan. The main characters all end up at a roadhouse, where they go in and out of one another's rooms, revealing their embarrassing affairs. Eventually they work out their differences; O'Shaugnessy consummates his new marriage, and his former lover reconciles with her husband.
A roadhouse (US) or stopping house (Canada) or سرائے is a commercial establishment typically built on or near a major road or highway that services passing travellers. The word's meaning varies slightly by country. The historical equivalent was often known as a coaching inn, providing food, drink, and rest to people and horses.
Woods purchased the production rights after reading the original. He had previously produced touring melodramas that were as likely to appear in the Bowery as on Broadway. The Girl from Rector's was his first regular Broadway production.
The Bowery is a street and neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north. The eponymous neighborhood runs roughly from the Bowery east to Allen Street and First Avenue, and from Canal Street north to Cooper Square/East Fourth Street. To the south is Chinatown, to the east are the Lower East Side and the East Village, and to the west are Little Italy and NoHo. It has historically been considered a part of the Lower East Side.
Prior to opening on Broadway, preview performances were scheduled in Trenton, New Jersey. After the first matinee, a group of 25 local clergy complained to Trenton police the play was immoral. The police shut the play down and did not permit any further performances. [2] [3]
Trenton is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. It briefly served as the capital of the United States in 1784. The city's metropolitan area, consisting of Mercer County, is grouped with the New York Combined Statistical Area by the United States Census Bureau, but it directly borders the Philadelphia metropolitan area and was from 1990 until 2000 part of the Philadelphia Combined Statistical Area. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913, making it the state's tenth most populous municipality. The Census Bureau estimated that the city's population was 84,034 in 2014.
The Broadway production opened at Weber's Music Hall on February 1, 1909. It ran there until June 1909, with 184 performances.
The characters and cast from the Broadway production are given below:
Character | Broadway cast [4] |
---|---|
Loute Sedaine | Violet Dale |
Richard O'Shaugnessy | Van Rensselaer Wheeler |
Duddle | J. W. Ashley |
Col. Andrew Tandy | William Burress |
Prof. Audrey Maboon | Dallas Welford |
Mrs. Witherspoon Copley | Elita Proctor Otis |
Marcia Singleton | Nena Blake |
Angelica | Nella Webb |
Judge Caperton | Herbert Carr |
Knickebain | Max Freeman |
Deacon Wiggleford | John Daly Murphy |
Mrs. Tarbox | Mildred McNeill |
Mrs. Wiggleford | Isabel O'Madigan |
Vera Flower | Florence M. Constantine |
Pansie Patterson | Helena H. Constantine |
Nannie Hall | Evelyn F. Constantine |
The play's content was controversial among contemporary critics, many of whom condemned the play as indecent. Muckracking journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams counted it as one of many plays of "dubious character" that had invaded American theater. [5] He decried its suggestive dialogue, as well as its portrayal of loose women and lecherous men, and described the final act as "the grossest bit of action that I have ever seen on an English-speaking stage". [6] When the play previewed in Trenton, the Trenton Evening Times denounced it as "offensively vulgar and putrid". [7] The New York Times review of the Broadway production said Potter "appears to have gone as far as he thought the police would allow". [8] In The Evening World , reviewer Charles Darnton said the play "tries very hard to be bad, but it only succeeds in being stupid". [9]
Samuel Hopkins Adams was an American writer, best known for his investigative journalism and muckraking.
The Evening World was a newspaper that was published in New York City from 1887 to 1931. It was owned by Joseph Pulitzer, and served as an evening edition of the New York World.
The play's title refers to a popular Manhattan restaurant of its day operated by George Rector, although the restaurant does not appear in the play and is only mentioned once. The play's notoriety proved problematic for Rector, who was in the process of building the Hotel Rector to go with his restaurant. Many believed the unsavory reputation of the play tarnished the new hotel, and held the play responsible when Rector declared his new venture bankrupt in May 1913. [10] [11] The new owners changed the name to escape the stigma. [12]
Jessica Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress best known for her Academy Award winning performance in the film Driving Miss Daisy. Tandy appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV.
No, No, Nanette is a musical comedy with lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, music by Vincent Youmans, and a book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, based on Mandel's 1919 Broadway play My Lady Friends. The farcical story involves three couples who find themselves together at a cottage in Atlantic City in the midst of a blackmail scheme, focusing on a young, fun-loving Manhattan heiress who naughtily runs off for a weekend, leaving her unhappy fiancé. Its songs include the well-known "Tea for Two" and "I Want to Be Happy".
Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden, known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American actress who achieved her greatest success as the character Peter Pan, first playing the role in the 1905 Broadway production of Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. Adams's personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more than one million dollars during her peak.
Albert Herman Woods, born Aladore Herman, was an American theatrical producer. He produced over 140 plays on Broadway, including some of the most successful shows of the period, sometimes under the name of the production company Al Woods Ltd. or A. H. Woods. Woods also built the Eltinge Theatre, named for one of his most successful and profitable stars, Julian Eltinge.
J.B. is a 1958 play written in free verse by American playwright and poet Archibald MacLeish and is a modern retelling of the story of the biblical figure Job – hence the title: J.B./Job. The play went through several incarnations before it was finally published. MacLeish began the work in 1953 as a one-act production but within three years had expanded it to a full three-act manuscript.
Alfred Fox Uhry is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has received an Academy Award, two Tony Awards and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for dramatic writing for Driving Miss Daisy. He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Norman Krasna was an American screenwriter, playwright, producer, and film director. He is best known for penning screwball comedies which centered on a case of mistaken identity. Krasna also directed three films during a forty-year career in Hollywood. He garnered four Academy Award screenwriting nominations, winning once for 1943's Princess O'Rourke, a film he also directed.
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1997) is a play written and directed by Moisés Kaufman. It deals with Oscar Wilde's three trials on the matter of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and other men.
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George Rector was a restaurateur, raconteur and food authority who wrote several cookbooks in the 1920s and '30s. He appeared on radio on the Columbia Broadcasting System in Dine with George Rector and played himself in at least one movie, Every Day's a Holiday (1937), with Mae West.
The Hotel Claridge was a 16-story building on Times Square in Manhattan, New York City, at the southeast corner of Broadway and 44th Street. Originally known as the Hotel Rector, it was built of brick in the Beaux-arts style in 1910-11. The 14-story building had 240 guest rooms and 216,000 square feet of space. It operated for 61 years until the building was demolished in 1972.
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The Demi-Virgin is a three-act play written by Avery Hopwood. Producer Albert H. Woods staged it on Broadway, where it was a hit during the 1921–22 season. The play is a bedroom farce about former couple Gloria Graham and Wally Deane, both movie actors, whose marriage was so brief that the press speculated about whether Gloria was still a virgin. She attempts to seduce Wally when they are forced to reunite for a movie, but after playing along he surprises her by revealing that their divorce is not valid.
The Girl in the Limousine is a play written by Wilson Collison and Avery Hopwood. The story is a bedroom farce about a man who accidentally finds himself undressed in the bedroom of his ex-girlfriend. Producer A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway in 1919. The production was a success, closing in February 1920 after 137 performances. The play was adapted into a movie in 1924.
Cheating Cheaters is a 1916 play written by Max Marcin. Producer A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway. The play is a melodramatic farce about two groups of jewel thieves who are each posing as a wealthy family in order to rob the other.
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