ARIZONA ON STAGE by THOMAS P. COLLINS

Author:THOMAS P. COLLINS
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TWODOT®
Published: 2015-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

The second Arizona tour opened March 7 and 8, 1896, at Patton’s Opera House in Prescott; March 9 at the Phoenix Opera House, with a company of sixteen people and the Nuremburg cathedral choir rendering appropriate music throughout the piece; and May 22 at Babbitt’s Opera House in Flagstaff. This time William L. Roberts starred as Mephisto, Olive Martin as Marguerite, Richard Cotton as Faust. Ads and puffs touted the first two as “eminent” and “clever” and of impressive stature and physical beauty. But in Nebraska, the blunt critic Willa Cather said it scarcely mattered that Olive Martin looked like an “ungainly Amazon” or that her Faust exuded absolutely no romantic charisma. “The play seems to be a grand substitution of electricity for ethics and red lights for dramatic art.”3

After its tour of Arizona in early 1896, this production played again at the Phoenix Opera House on November 3, in Prescott on November 4–5, and in Flagstaff at Babbitt’s Opera House on November 7. With the exception of the roles of Mephisto and Marguerite, reviews show that the casting of the title role and other supporting roles was in a state of flux.

Since the local newspapers offered so little in the way of reviews, we must rely on out-of-state critics to get some idea of the quality of the production. San Francisco and Los Angeles received the performances with almost diametrically opposed attitudes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.