1900 Sarah Bernhardt and Benoit Constant Coquelin open for a five-week engagement, in French, at the Garden Theatre in New York. Bernhardt plays Camille, Tosca, Roxanne, and two "breeches" roles, Hamlet and L'Aiglon.

1911 At London's Savoy Theatre, there is a special performance by the Pioneer Players of Laurence Houseman's Pains and Penalties: The Defence of Queen Caroline. It had been banned because it dealt with royalty in an unflattering way.

1930 Rex Harrison makes his London debut as the Hon. Fred Thrippleton in Florence Kilpatrick's Getting George Married at the Everyman Theatre.

1935 Jane Cowl is the "First Lady" at New York's Music Box Theatre. This comedy is directed by George S. Kaufman, co-writer with Katharine Dayton. The play deals with an influential Washington lady, modeled after Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

1999 Steppenwolf Theatre Company's production of Terry Johnson's Sigmund Freud comedy, Hysteria, directed by John Malkovich, begins performances in Chicago tonight. The play recently got a new lead. Replacing Steppenwolf ensemble member Alan Wilder in the role of the father of psychoanalysis is Yasen Peyankov. Wilder withdrew "for personal reasons." John Malkovich, probably Steppenwolf's most famous member, will direct Hysteria, a comedy about Sigmund Freud's last days in a quiet London suburb. Malkovich, well known to film audiences, rarely takes the stage at Steppenwolf, or elsewhere, anymore, preferring to work behind the scenes. -- by Anne Bradley and Steve Luber