The show has been running at East Lynne's First Presbyterian Church digs since June 23 and is due to close on July 24. Artistic director Gayle Stahlhuth confirmed that she was in talks with various Off-Broadway spaces, but that nothing is set in stone.
If Jealousy should make the move, it would be a rare Gotham transfer for East Lynne, which is little known outside the Cape May area. The company, founded by the late theatre historian, playwright and actor, Warren Kliewer, is billed as "reviving plays of the American heritage and producing adaptations of works by and about American literary figures." This translates into a roster of seldom-seen 19th-century and early-20th century plays, and a creative mission that takes the likes of once-towering literary lions like Clyde Fitch and William Dean Howells very seriously.
Jealousy bowed on Broadway in 1928. Fay Bainter and John Halliday starred. The play tells of two Parisian newlyweds, a struggling artist and the wife who will do anything to help him.
The East Lynne Theater Company started producing in North Jersey in 1980, and in 1989 settled in Cape May, the resort town on the southern Jersey shore which is known for its beautifully preserved Victorian architecture.
The troupe takes its name from East Lynne, or, The Earl's Daughter, a mid-19th-century American play from Mrs. Henry Wood, which, at the time, became a byword for melodrama, as well as a failsafe title guaranteed to draw an audience.