Page:Anton Chekhov - The Boor - Tr. Hilmar Baukhage (1915).djvu/31

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BERKELEY SQUARE

Play In 3 acts. By John L. Balderston. Produced originally by Gilbert Miller and Leslie Howard at the Lyceum Theatre, New York. 7 males, 8 females, 1 interior. Modern and Eighteenth century costumes. Plays a full evening.

Peter Standish, a young American architect, has inherited, so it seems, an old English house in which one of his ancestors had played an important role. Taking up his residence there, he discovers that he can walk back and forth through time, that he can step into the shoes of his ancestor and live the life that man lived in the Eighteenth century. He accepts the challenge of the adventure and finds himself entering the old drawing-room dressed in the costume of the time but still essentially himself, and he plays the game as well as he can. Much charms, but much also shocks him. His knowledge of the future sometimes trips him up, but the platitudes of the Nineteenth and the Twentieth centuries are brilliant epigrams to those about him. But despite his success he is not really at home.

"Berkeley Square" is the finest play of the season—a play that casts a spell." J. Brooks Atkinson, New York Times.

"Unusual in flavor and right in entertainment—deserves the attention of every playgoer who wants to buy an evening of complete beguilement." John Anderson, N. Y. Evening Journal.

(Royalty will be quoted on application for cities and towns where it may be presented by amateurs.) Price 75 Cents.


HOLIDAY

Comedy in 3 acts. By Philip Barry. Produced originally by Arthur Hopkins at the Plymouth Theatre, New York. 7 males, 5 females. 2 interiors. Modern costumes. Plays a full evening.

Holiday, with Hope Williams, was one of the outstanding successes of the New York theatre, and later done in motion pictures with Ann Harding. It is the story of a young man who is engaged to a girl of great wealth and social standing. But he refuses to "make good" with her father, preferring to enjoy life as a holiday and an independent venture in happiness. Because of this the two separate, but at the end the girl's sister realizing that the young man is right and her family wrong, confesses that she is in love with him and agrees to go away and marry him. A delightful and brilliant comedy.

"One could ask for nothing better (except that it is dangerous to laugh so hard) than a stageful of Philip Barry characters indulging in his special brand of happy-go-lucky nonsense."

Robert Littell, N. Y. Post.

"It is continuously gay and amusing, blissfully mad, and stunningly sane, all at the same time. . . ." John Anderson, N. Y. Journal.

(Royalty, fifty dollars.) Price $2.00 per copy (in cloth).