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THE TORCH-BEARERS
"There will be actresses when husbands are a thing of the past."
THE TORCH-BEARERS
NEW YORK AMERICAN LIBRARY SERVICE 1923
"The Torch-Bearers," by George Kelly, was presented by Stewart and French for the first time on any stage at the Savoy Theatre, Asbury Park, New Jersey, on the night of Monday, August 14, 1922, with the following cast:
MR. FREDERICK RITTER MR. ARTHUR SHAW MR. HUXLEY HOSSEFROSSE MR. DOUGLAS GARDEN MR. SPINDLER MR. EDWARD REESE MR. RALPH TWILLER MR. BOOTH HOWARD TEDDY SPEARING MR. WILLIAM CASTLE MR. STAGE MANAGER MR. J. A. CURTIS MRS. PAULA RITTER MISS MARY BOLAND MRS. J. DURO PAMPINELLI MISS ALISON SKIPWORTH MRS. NELLY FELL MISS HELEN LOWELL MISS FLORENCE MCCRICKETT MISS ROSE MARY KING MRS. CLARA SHEPPARD MISS DAISY ATHERTON JENNY MISS MARY GILDEA
Play staged by the Author
NOTE--
The form of the present manuscript is exactly that in which this play was presented during its run at the Vanderbilt Theatre, New York City, New York.
THE TORCH-BEARERS
CAST
MR. FREDERICK RITTER MR. HUXLEY HOSSEFROSSE MR. SPINDLER MR. RALPH TWILLER TEDDY SPEARING MR. STAGE MANAGER MRS. PAULA RITTER MRS. J. DURO PAMPINELLI MRS. NELLY FELL MISS FLORENCE MCCRICKETT MRS. CLARA SHEPPARD JENNY
SCENE
ACT I--A kind of drawing-room in the home of Frederick Ritter, on an evening in October, about 8 o'clock.
ACT II--Behind the scenes at Horticultural Hall, the following evening at 8:30.
Stage, screen and amateur rights for the production of this play are controlled by the author, George Kelly, 3665 Midvale Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. No public readings or performances may be given without his written consent.
The intermissions were filled with three questions which more or less concern the reader of the published play. Who was George Kelly? Where did he get the comedy? How would it go?
On August 29th, 1922, George Kelly was a perfectly good Philadelphian in his late twenties who was much better known to vaudeville than to fame. He had written, directed, and played in about a dozen one-act comedies and dramas on Keith and Orpheum time. He had begun by quitting his family's private tutor to try acting in a playlet by the late Paul Armstrong. Then--with no more preparation, apparently--he had begun to write his own vehicles. A certain drama in France absorbed his attentions for a while. After that more "sketches"--as the vaudeville powers call any effort above vocal or bodily acrobatics--and suddenly a play.
There may be a good many reasons why it didn't, and some may lead you far into aesthetic explorations of the present breakdown of dramatic form all over the world. But the reader will find more cogent reasons in the pages that follow this introduction. Personally, I should put it down to the fact that the character-study of the first act and the hokum of the second are irresistible. We have all met our Pampinellis, and we have all seen the lady prompter take a curtain call, or had our mustache fall off in the big scene. We can never resist some characterization on the stage, and as for such hokum as this record of all the mishaps of the amateur actor, ill luck is the heart of broad comedy and when ill luck comes where it is most painful--in personal display--Cassandra herself must smile.
But there is art in this play--not mere observation--and I am afraid none of the Pampinellis who are to be concerned with its future will ever quite equal the person that the author and Alison Skipworth, the actress, created between them. I do not look for any moment so extraordinary as when Mrs. Pampinelli, discussing the fatalities invariably connected with these amateur performances, reaches her peroration: "We are not dismayed; we have the lessons of history to fortify us: for whenever the torch of essential culture has been raised, there has unfailingly been the concomitant exactment of a human life." For one cannot expect to find a cuckoo-clock always present with its sapient comment at such a moment.
The reader will find the cuckoo-clock, the satire, and the hokum for himself. He will also detect, I think, a strain of divine and devilish madness in Kelly which promises something of genius for the American drama. The reader may note, too, in Kelly's script the kind of practical qualification for the theatre of which Mr. Ritter speaks feelingly on page 56. This qualification has produced extraordinarily effective humor and something else. This is a sense for stage management. It makes Kelly a rare and precious figure in our theatre, and gives you a script to read--or to produce--that is liberally supplied with every bit of business and direction necessary for putting on the play--either in the Cohoes Little Theatre or your own imagination.
KENNETH MACGOWAN.
Pelham Manor, N. Y., February 25, 1923.
NOTE: The drawing-room at Ritter's, in which the first and last acts are laid, is a comfortable-looking room, suggestive of good circumstance. Toward the back there is a fancy wooden partition separating the hallway from the room proper. This partition begins rather high up on the side walls and curves deeply down to two ornamental columns, five feet high and set about five feet apart, forming the entrance from the hallway to the room. Straight out through this entrance, and paralleling the partition, is the staircase, running up to the left and through an arched doorway. The foot of the staircase is just to the right of the center-door; and then the hallway continues on out to the front door. On the left, there is a passageway between the staircase and the partition, running through an arched doorway to the body of the house. In the room proper, breaking the angle of the right wall and the partition, is a door, opening out, and below this door, a casement-window. On the left, breaking the angle of the left wall and the partition, is the mantelpiece, and below it a door, opening out. Just inside the partition, on either side of the center-door, is a built-in seat.
The entire room and hallway is done in a scheme of silver and the lighter shades of green. All the woodwork and furniture, including the piano and mantelpiece, is finished in silver-green, and the walls and ceiling are in blended tones of orchid, gray and green, decorated with tapestried panel-effects. The carpet is gray-green, and the vases and clock on the mantelpiece, as well as the little cuckoo-clock over the door at the left, are green. The drapes on the casement-window and the doorways, at the head of the stairs and in the left hallway, are in rose-colored brocaded satin; and the pads on the partition-seats are covered with the same material. The piano-throw is a garishly subdued blend of old-rose, Nile green and canary-colored silk.
Right out between the little wooden columns of the center-door, set flat against the staircase, is a small console-table, holding a most beautiful rose-colored vase filled with wisteria; and on the piano there is a similar vase filled with white and yellow blossoms. On either side of the console-table there is a tall torchiere with a rose-colored shade; and the shades on the wall-lights, and the one on the lovely rose-colored vase-lamp on the table down at the right below the casement-window, are all rose-colored.
There's a brilliant array of cushions about the room, all shapes and sizes, and every color of the rainbow,--and many books and magazines. The piano, up at the right, is littered with music, cigarettes, in a fancy container, flowers and candy--in a pretty box made of pink satin.
The two arm-chairs in the room, one just to the left of the table below the window, and the other at the left side of the table over at the left, are over-stuffed in green-and-silver brocade.
There is a small table below the piano, with a light little chair beside it, the left side, and there is a similar chair over at the extreme left, below the door.
The keyboard of the piano parallels the right wall, with enough room, of course, between the piano-stool and wall to permit of easy use of the door. There must also be room enough above the piano for a passageway between it and the partition-seat.
The rights and lefts employed in the foregoing descriptions are, of course, the player's rights and lefts.
ACT ONE.
JENNY. Is that you, Mr. Ritter?
RITTER. That's who it is, Jenny! How are you?
RITTER. I'm whatever you are, Jenny.
JENNY. Ain't you back a bit soon?
RITTER. Yes, I thought I'd have to go down to Cincinnati for a week or two, but I didn't.
JENNY. Mrs. Ritter ain't expectin' you, is she?
RITTER. No, she isn't, Jenny.
JENNY. I thought I didn't remember hearin' her sayin' nothin'.
RITTER. Where is she?
JENNY. She's upstairs, sir, I'll call her.
RITTER. What are you doing around here, Jenny, housecleaning?
JENNY. No, sir, there's a rehearsal here tonight.
RITTER. What kind of a rehearsal?
JENNY. Why, a rehearsal for a show that Mrs. Ritter's takin' part in tomorrow night. They done it at the Civic Club the week after you went away, and they liked it so well they're doin' it again tomorrow night.
JENNY. Sir?
RITTER. I say, who liked it so well that they're doing it again?
JENNY. Why, everybody seemed to like it, Mr. Ritter, from what the papers said.
RITTER. What kind of a show is it?
JENNY. Why, I think it's a tragedy, from what I gather.
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