The Masque, La Salle University's student-run theater organization, was founded in 1934. With the support of faculty advisor Joseph Sprissler the Masque presented its first performance on December 27, 1934 with the play Sun Up. Though there have been some gaps (particularly during WWII when the group briefly disbanded), the Masque has continued to put on plays and musicals almost continuously since its inception.
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Take Me Along
La Salle College
"Take Me Along" is a warmhearted musical with a rather strange history. The fact that the musical is based on "Ah, Wilderness," Eugene O'Neill's only comedy, is enough to set it apart, but its real individuality lies in the theatrical landmarks which it established. "Take Me Along" marked songwriter Bob MerriIl's second venture in the musical theatre, and his second musical adaptation of O'Neill, the other being "New
Girl In Town" from "Anna Christie ." Although "New Girl In Town" was not entirely successful in adjusting the O'Neill drama to the rigid requirements of the musical stage, nevertheless it revealed Merrill's talent as a creator of atmospheric and
theatrical songs. "Take Me Along" showed a mature composer in Merrill who had profited by the mistakes of his initial musical work. Mr. Merrill is also responsible for the award winning score of "Carnival" which is enjoying successful New York and
National Company productions. Like Frank Laesser ("Guys and Dolls," "Where's Charlie," "The Most Happy Fella," etc .) Bob Merrill is a product of Tin Pan Alley. It is hard to believe that the composer of "Candy and Cake," and "How Much Is That
Doggie in the Window?" could have produced such memorable and genuinely moving songs as "It's Good to Be Alive," "We're Home," and "Love Makes the World Go 'Round" (the theme from Carnival).The casting of "Take Me Along" was also unique. The play marked Walter Pidgeon's first appearance in a musical since he left the vaudeville circuit to perform in films like
"Mrs. Miniver," "Madam Curie," "The Last Time I Saw Paris," and "The Executive Suite." Three seasons prior to his assignment in "Take Me Along." Mr. Pidgeon starred in "The Happiest Millionaire" both on Broadway and on tour. It was Mr. Pidgeon's appearance on the TV spectacular, "Meet Me In St. Louis," that persuaded producer David Merrick to sign Mr. Pidgeon as Nat Miller.To fill the demanding role of Aunt Lil, David Merrick called on the versatile British Actress, Eileen Herlie, who had appeared in his production of Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker." Miss Herlie, who has played Medea in London, as well as leading roles in Shakespeare, is no stranger to the work of Eugene O'Neill: she appeared in the London production of "Anna Christie." Miss Herlie is familiar to American movie
and television audiences through her portrayal of Queen Gertrude in Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet." Miss Herlie is currently appearing in the second American musical "All American," with Ray Bolger."Take Me Along'' also created a star . Robert Morse, whose J . Pierpont Finch of "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" is playing to SRO audiences in New York, got that all important break as the misunderstood adolescent, Richard. Although he had previously appeared twice on Broadway in "The Matchmaker" (with Eileen Herlie) and the musical comedy, "Say Darling, '' Mr. Morse's talent was left to blush
unseen until "Take Me Along" gave him a chance to blossom as a rising star of the American Theatre.The most anticipated factor of "Take Me Along" was the return of Jackie Gleason, who had been absent from the legitimate stage since "Along Fifth Avenue" in 1949. Although he shared equal billing with Walter Pidgeon and Eileen Herlie, Gleason's Sid Davis completely stole the show. Uncle Sid gave Gleason the opportunity to use his overwhelming ability of portraying the pathos and comedy which he had previously used in a very limited fashion with his classic television characters the Poor Soul and Reggie Van Gleason, 111. Gleason's Uncle Sid was such a blockbuster that his fellow artists voted him the Antoinette Perry Award for his performance. The "Tony" is the
Broadway equivalent of an Oscar . When presented with the silver medallion by the First Lady of the American Stage, Gleason quipped, "This is a helluvaway to meet Helen Hayes "Take Me Along" closed a few short weeks after Mr. Gleason's departure; a fitting epitaph for such a memorable performance."Take Me Along" opened on October 22, 1959 at the Shubert Theatre, N.Y., and closed on December 17, 1960, after successfully weathering the storm of Actor's Equity Strike, for a run of 448 performances .
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High Button Shoes
La Salle College
A Word About Tonight's Musical
Robert Frost once said, "All the fun's in how you say a thing." He might have added that, when you sing it, it's even more fun. In the best tradition of musicals, we're going to have an enormous amount of fun in presenting our show tonight. And our pleasure ·will be directly proportionate to the amount of pleasure that we convey to you who are viewing the show.
High Button Shoes opened on Broadway with Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray in the leading roles. It ran from 1947 to 1949 on Broadway, and during that time its "Mack Sennett Ballet" became famous . The critics recognized it as a masterly parody on the Sennett Bathing Beauties, the Keystone Kops, and "chase" scenes in general. They were unanimous in declaring it one of the funniest highlights of the show.
High Button Shoes is unadulterated hilarity. The New Yorker reviewer, joyous over the show's entertaining nonsense, wrote, "You don't have to worry your head about the story that has been concocted for High Button Shoes. There is something in it about the 1913 Rutgers football team, something about a couple of confidence men and their dealings in underwater real estate, something about a Model T Ford, and quite a lot about love, but all this is, as it should be, only the foolish necessary background for a collection of nice, lively vaudeville numbers."
The story concerns a mountebank and his stooge who, having made their names prominent on the police blotters of all the major cities, decide to have their names put on the social register of New Brunswick, New Jersey, the town in which Floy had grown up.
The two swindlers hurry there and, after intruding in a romance between a Rutgers football player and the sister of one of the town's most gullible socialites, they abscond with a satchel of money which they had chisled out of the townsfolk by promoting the development of some waterlogged real estate. But the satchel just happens to be attached to Fran, the football player's fickle sweetheart, and Floy promises to bring her to Atlantic City and marry her.
The con men are soon caught after a wild chase by Keystone Kops. Escaping from the jail, they return to New Brunswick and temporarily patch things up. Immediately they devote their talents to fixing the 1913 Rutgers-Princeton game by trying to undermine the morale of the Rutgers players. They are thwarted, however, when Rutgers wins, 40-0, and they are forced to hurriedly leave town in order to "try to make a dollar" somewhere else.
We sincerely hope that you are as pleased with our offering as we are in bringing it to you, and we hope that you will return to see our fall semester play.
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Three of a Kind
La Salle College
With the production of a comic trilogy, Three of a Kind (subtitled: "An Evening of Comedy"), the Masque ,offers its patrons something new behind the footlights of La Salle theatre. Long-time La Salle playgoers will no doubt recall the Masque's successful string of musical comedies and feature-length dramatic performances; but this season we innovate, and present for our audience's mirth-ridden approval a trio of guffawful one-act plays: Anton Chekhov's The Marriage Proposal, Noel Coward's Red Pepper, and Wolf Mankowich's The Bespoke Overcoat.
Into greasepaint goes a combined Masque cast of veterans, each a star in his or her own right. Three of a Kind also finds Sidney Macleod in his first Masque stint as director, but the affable Scotsman is by no means a novitiate with either the Masque in particular or the theatre in general. The genius of his stagecraft has won Macleod wide acclaim in his little more than a year at La Salle, as it has in seasons past in the Nation's Capital.
Three of a Kind is the second production in what might well be called the Masque's Season of Comedies, which commenced with the December presentation of Giraudoux's Tiger at the Gates and which will conclude with an as yet unnamed musical comedy in the Spring. Regular Masque patrons, we feel confident, will find in Three of a Kind that high degree of stage-polish which has characterized so many of our past shows. Those for whom this trilogy of one-act plays will serve as a first encounter with the Masque will return, we feel equally certain, as regular patrons of the future.
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Tiger at the Gates
La Salle College
Opening its second season in the College Union Theatre and its twenty-sixth continuous season in production, the Masque brings to the La Salle Stage Tiger at the Gates, Christopher Fry's monumental translation of Jean Giraudoux's La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu -- indeed by the work's scope a milestone in the history of drama at La Salle. A brilliant and bitter comedy set in an ancient Troy ripe for betrayal and destruction, Tiger at the Gates is the saga of a man's lonely struggle for peace, in the face of jingoistic sentiment and mob hysteria in his city-state. However, Giraudoux depends greatly upon allusion as a comic device, and much in Tiger at the Gates will be lost to those in the audience who do not know their Homer.
The muse of drama waxed musical on our stage last season as the Masque's Silver Anniversary produced two tuneshows, Guys and Dolls and Leave It to Jane, but long-time La Salle playgoers will recall the string of successful straight plays offered them in the past: Detective Story, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, The Potting Shed, and comedies Boy Meets Girl, Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, Thurber's The Male Animal, and Christopher Fry's own blank-versed The Lady's Not for Burning.
Veteran Masque patrons, we feel confident, will find in our production of Tiger at the Gates that high degree of theatrical polish and dramatic interpretiveness which has characterized so many of our past performances. Those for whom this comedy will serve as a first encounter with the Masque will- return, we feel equally certain, as regular patrons of the future . We cordially invite our patrons to attend the Masque's next presentation, on as-yet-unnamed play, in February.
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Finian's Rainbow
La Salle College
Finian's Rainbow marks the 24th anniversary of the MASQUE and the final show to be presented by us in the College Hall Auditorium . Next year we will celebrate our silver anniversary by moving into the new theater of the Student Union Building. This new show place will easily rank as one of the finest in the east, and we are looking forward with anticipation to looking back with nostalgia.
Now that we have Rodgers and Hammerstein out of our system (South Pacific, Carousel, and Oklahoma) we hasten to present Finian's Rainbow. Boasting one of the finest scores of the modern musical theater and an unusual satirical-comic book, the show contains such diverse elements as Irish immigrants, sharecroppers, a leprechaun, a bigoted southern senator, and a deaf mute. Rainbow is a blend of fanciful gaelic myth and a spoof at the stupidity of racial prejudice, and has an approach both in story line and musical score which is remarkable for its freshness.
Veteran MASQUE patrons, we feel confident, will find in our production of Finian's Rainbow, that high degree of polish which has characterized so many of our past shows. Those for whom this play will serve as a first encounter with the MASQUE will return, we feel equally certain, as regular patrons of the future.
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Boy Meets Girl
La Salle College
ABOUT "BOY MEETS GIRL"
By GEORGE ABBOTT
(Mr. Abbott produced the original Broadway version of "Boy Meets Girl")Boy Meets Girl is, I think, the best play that has yet appeared about Hollywood. It is the real thing. And it is the real thing because Bella and Samuel Spewack are reporters as well as dramatists and they report what they see and observe, not what convention would want them to see. They have captured Hollywood so definitely th9t I am sure that you cannot see this play without a great consciousness of the kind of place that it is. You don't see the long line of eucalyptus trees outside the widows, but you must know that it is there. You must know that down in the court below C. F. 's window are a dozen strutting assistant directors and executives and innumerable glamorous girls posturing for the benefit of all.
Most of the writings about the great film colony have overlooked an important expression of the Hollywood consciousness. That is the eagerness for culture. We have been given to believe in the past that a cross-section of Hollywood would reveal to us only a great number of not very bright actors ruled over by crass and illiterate producers. But the fact is not quite that. There is a great eagerness for the bigger and better things. In the studio lunch rooms, I have seen a group of executives puzzling their brains over a heavy game of "Guggenheim." And I am sure that the stranger who went to one of their parties expecting, and need I say hoping, to find a gigantic orgy would be shocked and surprised to witness a group of earnest faces puzzling over the latest word game from the metropolis at the other side of the country. Hollywood is secretly ashamed of itself and therefore makes a tremendous effort to do the right thing. The bad taste at times exhibited in the films is not exhibited in the private lives of those who make them. They read the best books, cultivate the best art (mostly very, very modern), collect first editions, dress with great and exaggerated care, observe the conventions, and are all ladies and gentlemen.
The character C. F. exemplifies all this. Law and Benson also, although they are quite obviously rebels against their status. And the other characters all combine to a truthful picture of this great. factory of mediocrity, as it is.
If, however,. authenticity were the only virtue of Boy Meets Girl, it would die unsung.
It is the wit of the Spewacks that casts over the whole thing a gay charm. They know how to write lines which are not only funny to read but which crackle when spoken in the theatre. In fact the Spewacks write so well that I wish that an act might be added carryall the scenes that we have cut out for purposes of stage production. I am sure you would all like to see the scenes which features Rosetti and C. F. in the projection room examining the film tests of the various babies from whom they wish to select a success to Happy. Unfortunately, this scene -- which was one of my very favorites -- had to be cut out because the audience, when the play was tried out in Philadelphia, felt sorry for the poor unfortunate babies who were not going to get the job. But in .its place you have the voice of KNX -- and I like that, too. The idea seems to be that I like Boy Meets Girl.
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Oklahoma!
La Salle College
About the Play
Since the opening of OKLAHOMA! in New York in the Spring of 1943, millions have seen and applauded the genius of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, II. The show is a classic which revitalized the whole of the musical comedy world . Through the years many honors have been showered upon OKLAHOMA! and upon its authors, including a special Pulitzer Prize Award and countless other prizes. Possibly the greatest and certainly the most unusual came to the Rodgers and Hammerstein work in 1953 when the legislature of the State of Oklahoma passed a bill to officially adopt the song "Oklahoma" as it anthem.
This year as in others, we of the MASQUE continue to present to you, our audience, the finest in theatrical fare. It is the hope of the MASQUE that you enjoy and cherish the fruits of our work as much as we enjoy presenting them to you, and we wish for you that every day will bring with it a "Beautiful Morning."
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The Potting Shed
La Salle College
The Masque of La Salle College is particularly proud, in this its twenty-third year, to present as a "first showing in the Philadelphia area" a play which we believe to be one of the two or three really important dramas written in - the past ten years - The Potting Shed by Graham Greene. The Potting Shed is a unique play, for, while it contains a representative theme for our time, Mr. Greene's intention, which was to entertain, is always evident. All of the elements of a good detective story - suspense, mystery, excitement - are found in The Potting Shed, serving to bring forth the theme more vividly.
Veteran Masque patrons, we feel confident, will find in our production of The Potting Shed, that high degree of polish which has characterized so many of our past productions. Those for whom this play will serve as a first encounter with the Masque, will return, we feel equally certain, as regular patrons of the future.
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Carousel
La Salle College
A Word About the Play
On April 20, 1945 the morning after the Theater Guild introduced Rodgers and Hammerstein's new musical at the Majestic Theater, eight New York newspapers acclaimed Carousel as one of the fine musicals of the decade and the best since Oklahoma. And the critics voiced their praises through 890 Broadway performances, for the Rodgers and Hammerstein team had triumphed again.
But with Carousel they abandoned the usual happy go lucky formula of their musicals for a play presenting a sadly sentimental theme. They did not, however, lose the habit of pregnating the story with fine music. June ls Bustin' Out All Over, If I Loved you, You'll Never Walk Alone, and What's the Use of Won'drin' and the rest of the score you are about to hear have taken their place with the great tunes of our time - part of our musical heritage.
It is the hope of the Masque that you enjoy and cherish these songs as much as we enjoy singing them for you. And if you like them, sing them often, and sing with us as... The Waltz Begins.
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The Lady's Not For Burning
La Salle College
When The Lady's not for Burning had its premiere in Boston there was no dissenting voice among the critic. After the opening in New York in November, 1950, the enthusiasm was even louder; the usually cautious appraisers united in loud hosannas of praise. In the New York Journal-American George Jean Nathan wrote, " In a theater largely consecrated to serving the eye Christopher Fry stands out as a playwright who serves that badly neglected organ, the ear ... He delights in the beautiful sounds of words and the smooth roll of sentences and the fireworks their flame can set alight.''
The play is especially rich in an idiom that is beyond ordinary '' realistic speech'' and a great deal more vivid than contrived realism. Fry's drama effects a combination of grace and gusto which is peculiar but always appropriate. Apart from the unpredictable bursts of beauty, the play is compounded of intellectual wit and earthy humor. Laughter is the surest touch of genius in creation.'' Fry assures us through the mouth of Thoma Mendip. And this play, brimming with satirical thrusts at judicial folderol and radiant with a shimmering sensibility, projects that genius.
The play concerns a young man and a young lady. The former, having seen enough of life, is disillusioned and wants to leave it. The latter, filled with the joy of living, has been accused of witchcraft and is to die. They meet in the official quarter of a small town where their fates are to be decided. But how they resolve their difficulties and what the outcome is will be yours to enjoy. It is with pride that we of the Masque raise the curtain on The Lady's not for Burning.
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Babes in Arms
La Salle College
Something about the Play
When, on the evening of April 14, 1937, Dwight Deere Wiman presented Rodgers and Hart's new musical comedy, " Babes in Arms, at the Shubert Theatre in New York, he introduced to theatre audiences such "new faces" as Mitzi Green, Alfred Drake, Ray Heatherton, Dan Dailey, Robert Rundseville, and the Nicholas Brothers. But - which turns out to be more important - he introduced to the realm of popular music such king-sized favorites as "Where or When," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Johnny One Note," "My Funny Valentine" and the rest of the score that you are about to hear. It is the hope of the MASQUE that you, like us, love these great songs. We are privileged , through the kindness of Mr. Richard Rodgers, to present the first off-Broadway production of Babes In Arms. If its plot was obviously contrived to make room for the melodies, it is a happy story, even though it takes its sources from a day-gone-by; a day when we - hopeful we - thought an economic depression was the worst thing that could happen to us. Strike up the band .