Maxwell Anderson

This play is based on the William March novel by the same title. It is the story of Rhoda Penmark, eight years old, and her mother (Christine). The young girl on the surface seems to be a perfect child, but is an evil and emotionless murderess. This original book is credited with starting the genre books and films about evil or psychopathic children.

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The scene is a small city in Ohio, and the chief characters are Stephen Minch, an inventor who works for the joy of inventing; his wife, Martha; and his assistant, Hanus Wicks. For thirty years the Minch family has lived uneventfully in the same city, and Hanus has lived with them. Their routine existence is blasted by a marvelous invention of Stephen’s, through which various characters can return to their youth, and there enact not only what really happened, but also what might have been. The old bicycle shop, seen in 1902; the wonder and skepticism of people at the “horseless buggy"; the picnic by the lake and the choir practice scene in the church—carry one back into the romantic past. Finally, Stephen, Martha and Hanus return to the present wiser, richer in experience and more happily adjusted than before.

Nathaniel, a sea captain who left Salem penniless, returns wealthy after a seven-year absence. With one exception, the pleasure of the puritanical members of his family is marred when they discover he has brought a Malay wife and their two children back with him. Deeply as he loves Oparre, the princess who has shared danger and misfortune with him, Nathaniel cannot but feel the invisible finger of scorn pointed at him by the townspeople, or avoid hearing their whispered comments on his unusual alliance. For Oparre's sake he lends them money to consolidate his social position, but they find this a weapon to be used against him. The travel of the man's soul when faced with a sudden choice between dishonor and the loss of his property or the loss of his dark-skinned family, and the magnificent self-sacrifice of the woman who has risked all she has for love have been clearly and forcefully presented.

National Theatre, Washington, D.C., direction A.L. Erlanger Realty Corp. and W.H. Rapley, business management S.E. Cochran, third play of the American Theatre Society and Theatre Guild subscription season, the Theatre Guild presents "Mary of Scotland," a new play by Maxwell Anderson with Helen Hayes, Philip Merivale, Helen Menken, the production directed by Theresa Helburn, settings and costumes designed by Robert Edmond Jones.