Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, joining the British Army in World War I, and as a captain of the British Home Guard in World War II.
Dionysius Lardner "Dion" Boucicault was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the English-speaking theatre. Although The New York Times hailed him in his obituary as "the most conspicuous English dramatist of the 19th century," he and his second wife, Agnes Robertson Boucicault, had applied for and received American citizenship in 1873.
The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay, and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American drama critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an occasional actor and playwright, and a prominent radio personality.
An Ideal Husband is a four-act play by Oscar Wilde that revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. It was first produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London in 1895 and ran for 124 performances. It has been revived in many theatre productions and adapted for the cinema, radio and television.
The Man Who Came to Dinner is a comedy play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It debuted on October 16, 1939, at the Music Box Theatre in New York City, where it ran until 1941, closing after 739 performances. It then enjoyed a number of New York and London revivals. The first London production was staged at The Savoy Theatre starring Robert Morley and Coral Browne. In 1990, Browne stated in a televised biographical interview, broadcast on UK Channel 4, that she bought the rights to the play, borrowing money from her dentist to do so. When she died, her will revealed that she had received royalties for all future productions and adaptations.
John Lawrence Toole was an English comic actor, actor-manager and theatrical producer. He was famous for his roles in farce and in serio-comic melodramas, in a career that spanned more than four decades, and the first actor to have a West End theatre named after him.
Dame Irene Vanbrugh DBE was an English actress. The daughter of a clergyman, Vanbrugh followed her elder sister Violet into the theatrical profession and sustained a career for more than 50 years.
Dion Boucicault Jr. was an actor and stage director. A son of the well-known playwright Dion Boucicault and actress Agnes Robertson, he followed his father into the theatrical profession and made a career as a character actor and a director. In addition to extensive work in the West End of London, he spent considerable time in Australia, where he went into management in the 1880s.
Nude with Violin is a play in three acts by Noël Coward. A light comedy of manners, the play is a satire on "Modern Art", criticism, artistic pretension and the value placed on art. It is set in Paris in 1956 and portrays the effect on the family and associates of a famous artist when it is revealed after his death that he painted none of the pictures signed by him and sold for large sums. The action is mostly under the discreet control of the artist's valet, Sebastien, who manipulates events to bring about a happy ending for all the characters.
Violet Vanbrugh, born Violet Augusta Mary Barnes, was an English actress who had a career spanning more than 50 years. Despite her many successes, her career was overshadowed by that of her more famous sister Irene Vanbrugh.
Oliver Peters Heggie, billed as O. P. Heggie, was an Australian film and theatre actor best known for portraying the hermit who befriends the Monster in the film Bride of Frankenstein (1935). He was born Otto Peters Heggie at Angaston, South Australia to a local pastoralist. He was educated at Whinham College and the Adelaide Conservatoire of Music. He died in Los Angeles of pneumonia. He is buried at Woodside Cemetery, Yarmouth Port, Barnstable County, Massachusetts.
The Dover Road is a three-act comedy by A. A. Milne, seen on Broadway in 1921–22 and in the West End in 1922–23. It depicts the dampening effect of close proximity on the ardour of eloping couples when they are forced into sustained exposure to each other's habits and idiosyncrasies.
Ladies' Night is a three-act play originally written by Charlton Andrews and later reworked by Avery Hopwood. The play was a sex farce with part of the action set in a Turkish bath instead of a bedroom. A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway, where opened under the direction of Bertram Harrison on August 9, 1920 at the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre. Ladies' Night had a run of 375 performances with the final curtain falling in June 1921. It was revived on Broadway in adapted forms in 1945 and 1950.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is an American playwright. He won the 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play for his plays Appropriate and An Octoroon. His plays Gloria and Everybody were finalists for the 2016 and 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama respectively. He was named a MacArthur Fellow for 2016.
An Octoroon is a play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. It is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, which premiered in 1859. Jacobs-Jenkins reframes Boucicault's play using its original characters and plot, speaking much of Boucicault's dialogue, and critiques its portrayal of race using Brechtian devices. Jacobs-Jenkins considers An Octoroon and his other works Appropriate and Neighbors linked in the exploration of theatre, genre, and how theatre interacts with questions of identity, along with how these questions transform as a part of life. In a 2018 poll by critics of The New York Times, the work was ranked the second-greatest American play of the past 25 years.
Mr Pim Passes By is a three act comedy by A. A. Milne, first produced in 1919, and seen in the West End in 1920 and on Broadway and in Australia in 1921. There were later stage revivals in London and New York, and the play has been adapted for radio, television and cinema.
Ion Swinley, born Eric Ion Swindley was an English actor, known for his appearances in classics and modern dramas and comedies.
Faith Celli, born Dorothy Faith Standing, was an English actress, particularly associated with the plays of J. M. Barrie and A. A. Milne. She had a 20-year career from 1907, after which she retired from the stage.
Regina Wallace was an American film and theatre actress.
