Today In Theatre History: JANUARY 2
By Robert Viagas
and Christopher Reichheld and anne Bradley
02 Jan 2009
1910 American actress Agnes Booth dies today at age of 63. She was the wife of Junius Brutus Booth and the sister-in-law of Edwin.
1911 Elsie Janis stars as the enviable princess who is too thin. This musical aptly titled The Slim Princess has a book and lyrics by Henry Blossom and music by Leslie Stuart aided by Victor Herbert. 1922 Someone's getting away with Lawful Larceny at the Republic Theatre in New York. Margaret Lawrence stars in this Samuel Shipman play about a wife whose husband is seduced by another woman and pays for it by being robbed in a gambling saloon. This comedy will run beyond the season, to the bewilderment of the critics.
1926 Helen Menken stars in The Makropoulos Secret, adapted by Randal C. Burrett from Komedie by Karel Capek. It runs 88 performances.
1949 Birthday of iconoclastic playwright Christopher Durang, who wil write Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, Beyond Therapy, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, A History of the American Film, Sex and Longing, When Dinah Shore Ruled the Earth and many more.
1951 Robert E. Sherwood revises the late Philip Barry's last play Second Threshold. Clive Brook plays a retired senator who threatens suicide if his daughter marries a man twice her age. Margaret Phillips plays the daughter. This comedy runs for 126 performances at the Morosco Theatre in New York. 1968 The Negro Ensemble Company presents Peter Weiss' Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, its first production, at St. Mark's Playhouse in Greenwich Village. Rosalind Cash and Moses Gunn star in the drama about Portuguese colonialism in Africa.
1969 Untamed sexual desire in the suburbs is the subject of the musical comedy The Fig Leaves Are Falling, which managed only a 4-performance run despite music by Albert Hague, lyrics by "Hello Muddah" writer Allan Sherman, a leading performance by Dorothy Loudon, and a supporting cast that included David Cassidy and Jenny O'Hara.
1972 Fun City, a sarcastic-titled revue poking fun at New York in some of its darkest days, opens a 9-performance run at the Morosco Theatre with a cast that includes Joan Rivers, Rose Marie, Paul Ford, Pierre Epstein and Louis Zorich. Today's Birthdays: Vera Zorina 1917. Roger Miller 1936. Taye Diggs 1972.
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