Oregon Statesman/Moroni Olson Players to Present Second of Plays In Salem Last of Month

Attractive Janet Young, favorite with Salem audiences, who will appear in the “Makropoulos Secret,” the next Moroni-Olsen play to be presented under the auspices of the Lions club at the Fox Elsinore Friday night.

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Moroni Olson Players to Present Second of Plays In Salem Last of Month

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Those who remember the effective handling of Sutton Vane’s “Outward Bound” by the First Circuit Repertory company of the Moroni Olsen players three seasons ago, will look forward with interest to the coming of the company to the Fox Elsinore, January 31, with “The Makropoulos Secret,” second of the series of plays added to its repertory for the current season.

Both plays toy with the unknown in terms of the known, and each play provokes the who reads it or witnesses it in performance, to stimulating thought on the subject presented.

In “Outward Bound” Sutton Vane speculated in terms of the drama upon the theme of immortality expressed in the form of life after death, while in “The Makropoulos Secret” Karel Capek, better known to American audiences through “R. U. R.” speculates in terms of the drama upon the same theme, expressed in the form of life prolonged indefinitely.

Elena Makropoulos, daughter of the great Greek physician to Emperor Rudolph, becomes unwillingly the beneficiary of her father’s secret of prolonging life and youth for a span of hundreds of years. Through countless changes of names—always preserving the original initials—she has passed, disappearing and returning under a new name, since one cannot live indefinitely among other human beings unless one can share their physical metamorphoses.

And in the play we find her as Emilia Marty, singing woman, weary of her immortality but striving to recover the formula of life prolongation which had fallen into the hands of one of her lovers many years before; because Emilia feels the effect of her immortality wearing away and fears to face death, even though 350 years of life have become utterly boring to her.

The forcing of the secret from her by a group of people who have become suspicious of her inexplicable knowledge of their lives and affairs for generations back, lifts the play to its supreme climax, which is followed instantly by another course of mounting action, in the effort of these people to decide what to do with the secret once they have possessed it.

“The Makropoulos eScret” will be presented here, as was “Twelve Thousand” the first play of the season, under the auspices of the Lions club.