The Theatre: Oldest Theatre

To walled, moat-bound Colonial Charles Town (named for the Restoration’s merry monarch) in the Province of Carolina there came in 1733 a group of strolling players led by an efficient, talented actress remembered only as Monimia, the character she played for the eager Colonists in Otway’s The Orphan, or The Unhappy Marriage. Interest in Monimia’s muse was far greater than Charles Town’s court house could accommodate, even at 40s. a head.

Hence when Monimia returned with her players in the winter of 1736, Charles Town had the brand new Dock Street Theatre waiting for her, first theatre building in America. The play she chose to open it was George Farquhar’s bawdy Recruiting Officer, which fine-limbed ladies of the frank 18th Century theatre liked to play because it clothed them part of the time in the tight breeches of English soldiery.

This week the gentlemen and ladies of Charleston, S. C. turned out to applaud their city’s Footlight Players in the same Recruiting Officer, marking the opening of a splendid $350,000 resurrection of the old Dock Street Theatre, made possible by Charleston civic pride, plus FERA, plus WPA. A prettily conceited prologue written by DuBose Heyward, introduced the play

That woke these echoes in that earlier day

Before polite Victoria held sway,

When man was man and woman simply woman

And their behavior was frankly human.

The original Dock Street Theatre, sold in 1749, was followed by two successors, both destroyed by fire in the next 50 years. On the site in 1806 was built Charleston’s famous Planters’ Hotel, where dusty Southern palates cooled to prime Planters’ Punches. Remodeled in 1835, the hulk of it stood in dejected shabbiness 100 years later, when the FERA, on the prowl for projects, adopted the idea of Mrs. Burnet R. Maybank, wife of Charleston’s mayor, for salvaging the old hotel and reconstructing the historic theatre at the same time.

This week’s first nighters entered through the columned porch of the old hotel, under the same overhanging iron-grilled balcony, to the transformed lobby. Off the horseshoe of boxes on the second level was a bar decorated with mural reproductions of Hogarth’s “Rake’s Progress.” Rakes who sought anything stronger than soda pop were disappointed, for South Carolina does not permit the sale of alcoholic drinks in theatres.

Margaret Fell Lyon, leading lady of Charleston’s Footlight Players, succeeded tall Monimia in the feminine lead of Silvia. Cousin Melinda was played by auburn-haired. 5 ft. 2 in. Alecia Rhett. whose ancestors attended the opening of the first Dock Street Theatre. An artist and a leader in the Footlight Players, pretty 21-year-old Alecia may contribute more than her family name to the film production of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind.* She has a contract (without wages) for a part in the forthcoming Hollywood production.

* Whose hero is “Rhett Butler.”