Word: copley
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...Copley Productions is merely trying to give Boston a better than average taste of amateur theatricals, they're doing a first rate job. But if they seriously consider themselves a testing ground for plays of Broadway calibre, they're very definitely nestling in the wrong pew. Their offering this week, "Return Engagement," looks like a very bad combination of "Stage Door" and "Charley's Aunt." The title of the play shows at least a sense of humor on the part of the author--it very definitely is a return engagement of something you've seen innumerable times before...
...uninspired and rather dull account of the tribulations of combining tempermental stars, feverish amateurs, and stuffy patronesses in one undersized barn. Bert Lytell and Mady Christians play the roles of the guest stars--but they act as if they thought they were the guests at the Copley as well as at Stockton, playing their parts purely on instinct and experience, with a singular lack of originality or enthusiasm. Most of their supporting cast show a vast amount of the enthusiasm the stars lack--but very little else. The only relief in the entire play is provided by Audrey Christie...
...union of a vapid play and a cast that, with one marked exception, runs the entire gamut from indifferent to very bad is an unfortunate one. If "Boyd's Shop," the Copley's first play this season, lasted only two nights on Broadway, "Return Engagement" had better prepare to go to bed right here in Beantown...
...time when theatre managers are soothing the world's troubled brow either with raucous comedies or lavish musicals, "Boyd's Shop" blows into the Copley Theatre like a clean wind. It is a simple play about simple people with all the home-grown philosophy that is bound to blossom in Ulster. But St. John Ervine has put no haloes around his country folk; no sickening sentimentality. Instead, in the clash of old and new in rural Ireland Ervine has found the same problems which thrive in the largest city. And far from being "small townish," his characters...
...Shop" is the air of clean good cheer about it all. The comedy is graceful, not uproarious. The informality of the production was typified by Hiram Sherman, who entertained the audience between acts to prevent impatience over the scene changes, As No. 1 on th list of six Copley productions, "Boyd's Shop" may well be the best. But even though it proves a financial success, it will only stay for two weeks, to make way for Bert Lytell and Mady Christians in "Return Engagement." Boston has at last become a producing center. From last night's start, Horace Schmidlapp...