Time for a look at another of the Baz’s theatre-credits today. This time it’s the deeply controversial (in its time) play THE CAPTIVE. Written by the French dramatist Edouard Bourdet and known in French as La Prisonniere, translated by Arthur Hornblow Jr, it was the talk and scandal of New York when it opened on September 29 1926 – because its central theme was lesbian love and the struggle of one woman (the “captive” of the title) to live within the constraints of a society that could only condemn.
The great Broadway Diva Helen Menken played the heroine, Irene; Rathbone her tortured and conflicted husband Jacques. There was also an appearance by Arthur Wontner as a mutual friend (which makes this play a landmark for Holmes buffs).
Despite its controversy, and “unpleasant” theme, Brooks Atkinson, the New York Times’ no.1 critic (the Ben Brantley of his day) loved the play and raved about it in his review. He loved the Baz too, describing him as acting with “rare dignity and understanding” as the unhappy Jacques. But even this high praise and the warmly attentive reception of its audience didn’t save this play from the moral guardian of the time. The NYT announced on Feb 10 1927:
“… Police Raid Three Shows: Hold Actors & Managers
Warrants issued during the day by Chief City Magistrate McAdoo for the arrest of producers, manager and actors in “The Captive” playing at the Empire Theatre, “Sex” in Daly’s Sixty-third Street Theatre and “The Virgin Man” at the Princess Theatre were executed last night by the police detectives at the conclusion of those three performances…The prisoners were taken to Night Court….”
And here’s the Baz’s description of that event from his autobiography:
“…As we walked out onto the stage to await our first entrances we were stopped by a plainclothes policeman who showed his badge and said, ‘Please don’t let it disturb your performance tonight but consider yourself under arrest!’ At the close of the play the cast were all ordered to dress and stand by to be escorted in police cars to a night court.”
The malefactors were released later that night. But THE CAPTIVE closed. Rathbone was massively indignant about this attempt at censorship, calling it a “hideous betrayal,”
“…infamous example of the imposition of political censorship on a democratic society ever known in the history of responsible creative theater; this cold-blooded unscrupulous sabotage of an important contemporary work of art; this cheap political expedient to gain votes by humiliating and despoiling the right of public opinion to express itself and act upon its considered judgment as respected and respectable citizens.”
It wasn’t his last flirtation with representing alternative sexual orientations. In 1941 he and Martin Kosleck “gayed up” The Mad Doctor so brazenly (if not hysterically) it’s a miracle it got past the censors. In fact, Rathbone seems to have had a tolerance for and an openness about homosexuality that was – like his questioning of religious orthodoxy – quite ahead of its time.
Go HERE for Brooks Atkinson’s review of THE CAPTIVE in full.
Was Basil ever outed as bisexual?
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Was Ouida a lesbian? is that why he felt so passionately about this play?
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This is very interesting, there’s a book about this subject called “We Could Call Them Bulgarians” well worth the read, and Helen Menken’s autobiography also talks about it
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Has The Captive ever been revived?
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I wish they waa a film of this play with basil.
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This was a cool and fascinating man
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I just want to say Basil Rathbone was too hot to play bad guys. There, I said it.
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I second that!
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Pingback: The Captive (1926) redux « The Baz
This is a very fascinating and well-written article. I’m prompted to do some research on the topic of censorship on Broadway in the 1920s. The very idea they could think if staging a play called “Sex” seems counterintuitve. I enjoy your blog by the way and suspect I am on of the handful of males who are regular visitors!
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I have so enjoyed coming to this website over the past few weeks.Basil deserve a blog!
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Nice.Just needs blue eyes.
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Ooh, cute. He has the beautiful eyes. But yes, they should be blue!
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Francois Arnaud in The Borgias should play Basil!
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No, the nose and cheekbones are wrong.
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I meant for me ,for my own .He just needs those baby blues.
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Helen Menken was gay in real life
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So?
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Didn’t Rathbone advise Kosleck to ditch his boyfriend because he wasn’t talented enough?
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Yes, I read that in “Universal Horrors”. Kosleck comments wryly that the friend ended up a millionaire. This was during filming Pursuit to Algiers.
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I think Basil and Martin are so cute in The Mad Doctor, you are almost rooting for them because they seem such a couple and so in love in a weird way.
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I vote for Benedict Cumberbatch to play Basil *dies at the thought of uniting two of the most beautiful men who ever lived*
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BESIL! 😀
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Robert Pattinson as the Baz!!!
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poor Baz deserves better than Mr. Sparkles
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Totally, all Robert can do is sparkle and look in pain
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Go to 3.33! I always think Ann Brandon should fall in love with Holmes in this movie. It’s like they are set up to have a love affair! Just like in The Woman In Green, where you think he’s going to actually kiss her at one minute….*dying* Why couldn’t Basil’s Holmes have a love affair like in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. I always imagine it’s Basil in that film whenever I watch it. Try it. Put the movie on and just transpose Basil into the Robert Stephens part. Once you start hearing him in your head saying those lines and seeing him in those scenes you will just collapse on the floor and make moaning noises. OMG, when the woman is naked!Oh, Basil you should have made that movie!
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I think Ida Loupino should have played the girl in The Speckled Band. She just has the right look to me. I was always casting the canon stories from the cast of Basil’s films and from the actors of the time, and I had her as Irene Adler, and Leslie Howard as Colonel Sebastian Moran (not sure why, I just pictured him), and Joan Fontaine as Irene Adler, and I would have recast Watson, and given it to Charles Laughton
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I’m a huge fan of Ida Lupino, she was a real pioneer too. She was like only the second female director in Hollywood. She was so cool.
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I couldn’t do that, I’d be punching my screen because I’d be so jealous…
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How about Viggo Mortensen as Basil?
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I love Viggo!
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This is OT,but goooorgeous….
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What music is that?
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Is it Edward Scissorhands?
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What a fascinating article, and what a fascinating man. Did someone say they should make a movie of his life? I absolutely agree. And Uma Thurman should play Dietrich.
But who would play Ouida? 😀
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You know who I would have lovd to see play Ouida ten or fifteen years ago? JUDI DENCH!
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How about Helen Mirren as Ouida? I also could see Ralph Fiennes as Basil, or his brother Joseph. Both have that long jaw and that capacity to play good or evil.
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Helen Mirren is way too beautiful and sexy IMO. How about Imelda Staunton? Ralph Fiennes is gorgeous and handsome enough, but not tall and athletic. The trouble is Baz had so much awesomeness it can’t be replicated. – I’m only half kidding actually. Same with Errol Flynn and Gable. There’s people with some of what they have but no one with all of it. Damn, why wasn’tI around in the thirties?
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Imelda Staunton! Perfect choice. 🙂 That’s sorted, then.
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How about David Strathairn? (He will soon play Basil’s old role Dr Sloper in The Heiress on Broadway, by the way.)
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No, too slight and even a bit wimpy.
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I agree, and not handsome enough,though he is quite cute.
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The Sopranos!
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I like the idea of David Strathairn!
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Totally!
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I cast my vote for Imelda Staunton!
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Ralph Fiennes would have the awesomeness and Joseph would have the dark broodingness. Great choices
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Mmmm dark broodiness *wanders off into R rated dream*
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There’s a spurs player who looks just like the Baz called Michael Dawson, he should come out of football and act him. (He’d have to dye his hair though.)
…Or am I the only one who sees the likeness?
http://talksport.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/tscouk_old_image/blog/Michael-Dawson_1.jpg?itok=UYmFa3RF
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I can see it actually. Though I think Baz is handsomer and classier 🙂
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Too true. ;D
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Whoever played Basil would have to be incredibly handsome in just the right way
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Yes he had such unusual good looks. His face was both very masculine and yet almost androgynously beautiful from some angles, especially when he was younger. Those amazing eyes were almost vampish. And that long lean athlete’s body is essential in any portrayal of him. I’d say almost more important than the face is that body-type
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Does anyone know what his first wife looked like? What would the focus of the movie be?
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There’s an English actor, Charles Dance — he’s older, now — . I remember him well from The Jewel in the Crown and a PBS adaptaition of Rebecca. If you look up his pictures in Google, his eyes and bone structure are the spitting image of Basil — the only diffference is that the actor is blonde. I saw him in Bleak House a couple of years ago on PBS in a villainous role, and I thought he was Basil reincarnated because even the voices were similar.
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I remember Charles Dance! (Loved The Jewel in the Crown!) Yes, he is very much like Basil!
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Def agree,he’s the one I always think of as so like the Baz.And I love CDance,too!Always great,even in China Lake w/Ed Harris
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OMG I love your description! Vampish eyes! Unfi
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Whoever plays him will have to be sex on legs. Loooong, luscious legs
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Mmmmm……
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I didn’t know Basil felt so strongly about things. I always saw him as quite reserved and British. It’s amazing what different images I am getting of him lately.
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Great post thanks
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I love the way he smokes. It’s so sexy
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There’s a gorgeous cap of Holmes smoking a cigarette from the second Holmes movie on this site somewhere, and it’s very sexy, do a search for it
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That is a beautiful photograph of Basil.
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If only they’d made a movie of this play!
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Oh what a thought! Why didn’t they!?
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“Sex” was revived off-Broadway in 1999, it seems, to great reviews.
“Sex is the story of an ambitious working-class prostitute who beats the system. In her search for a better life, Margy Lamont travels from Montreal brothel to Trinidad nightclub to Connecticut mansion. The broadly comic play is filled with gangsters and molls, sailors and society matrons, and the language ricochets like bullets. Sex examines the relationship between sexuality and commerce, and the myriad of forms that prostitution takes. It balances the dark realities of the 1920s underworld with high comedy, and, of course, innuendo. ”
http://www.hourglassgroup.org/mae.html has all the info.
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Mae West wrote “Sex”! This story just gets better and better!
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What a strange time the twenties were
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Quote the Article:
“It wasn’t his last flirtation with representing alternative sexual orientations. In 1941 he and Martin Kosleck “gayed up” The Mad Doctor so brazenly (if not hysterically) it’s a miracle it got past the censors. In fact, Rathbone seems to have had a tolerance for and an openness about homosexuality that was – like his questioning of religious orthodoxy – quite ahead of its time.”
Does anyone wonder why?
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Remember, he also says this (in his autobiography): “Shocked, disturbed, frightened by this appalling exposé of a social sickness, not so freely discussed or accepted as it is today, audiences were, however, deeply appreciative…”
In and Out of Character has over 10 pages about the production (starts at page 97 in the new edition).
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Could you contextualize that? Who was “shocked, disturbed, frightened…” etc? And you HAD to call it a sickness even in 1960. Remember it was still against the law then. It wasn’t just a sickness it was a crime.
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Amazon.com has the book with the “look inside” function. Put the name “Wontner” in the search field and it will take you directly to the above sentence. Then you can scroll up and down to see what he writes about The Captive.
http://www.amazon.com/Out-Character-Basil-Rathbone/dp/0879101199/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347716222&sr=1-1&keywords=basil+rathbone
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The audience was shocked, not Basil, is what the OP should have said. There’s no evidence that Rathbone was shocked by homosexuality. I don’t think he would have played in The Mad Doctor if he were
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Perhaps because he was in theater and knew many people who were gay and lesbian in his profession and was therefore accepting. I have several friends in music and theater, some of them straight older people well into their 70s and even 80s, who were aware of gay and lesbian colleagues from their earliest careers, and as a result, have a lifelong acceptance of people of different sexual orientations. This acceptance was developed ahead of our own cultural acceptance because of the necessity of these artists working with and respecting many types of people within one’s profession. Being accepting of those who are gay and lesbian does not imply being gay and lesbian oneself.
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I think this is a very good point. He was raised as an Edwardian, but he lived most of his life in the bohemian world of the theatre and film. People were much more relaxed morally. By the way does anyone know what ended his first marriage and why he was estranged from his son. Was Marian unfaithful?
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Is Marian Unfaithful the dark nemesis of Mick Jagger’s one time girlfriend? 😀
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I wish I’d said that 😀
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I want to watch Basil Rathbone playing poor tortured Jacques. I can already see in my mind how beautifully he would do it.
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Me too
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How explicit was this play? (And indeed “Sex?” and “Virgin Man?”) I’m not being prurient, simply marveling at there being such plays at that time
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I found this customer review in Amazon, and I gather the play is not too explicit. It sounds as if the relationship is strongly suggested and that the metaphor of violets is used to indicate the relationship:
“This play was a cause celebre and notorious when it played in Paris and New York in 1926; it was revived in the 1950s. A scandalous hit, it is the story of an unhappy young woman, Irene, who spends most of the play in conflict and emotional pain but it’s not clear why. For sanctuary she marries a man who loves her but she cannot love him back with passion so he suffers. The cause of all this pain is always off stage so we’re not quite sure what it is. There is an insistent motif of violet flowers throughout the play. All is slowly revealed and we learn what the violets signify at the end of the play – although they have already cleverly pointed to the real life inspiration of the main characters*.
“Viewing the play from 2007, it is slight but interesting because of its subject matter which, even now, is rare to see on stage or in film. It is about the repression of lesbian love. It is an important play in terms of gay history because it was the first lesbian focused play to be performed in the USA. It is virtually lost now and waiting to be rediscovered because of its historical subject matter rather than the quality of the drama (which is pretty good). The writing is elegant and spare and the absence of the main driver of the drama is a clever device. Whether the play is moralistic or progressive is for the reader/audience to decide. I found it ambiguous and that in itself is interesting to me given the age of the play.”
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“Virtually lost now and waiting to be rediscovered” – well come on guys, here it is!!!! Rediscover The Captive today!!
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Amazing how modern he was in so many ways. I wonder if he would have been happy to see the LGBT movement and gay marriage. I think so. Was Basil a Christian?
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Thanks for posting on this! I had heard of the play and its reputation, but didn’t know that Rathbone was in the Broadway cast. What a varied and rich theater career he had. The NYT reviewer seems quite conflicted about the play’s subject by today’s standards, liking the drama but finding its subject “loathsome” (on the other hand, maybe his reaction is not so out of date…).
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I would be interested to read the full account of the arrest. is it available?
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So the play opened near the end of September, but the warrants were not issued until February of the next year. I can’t help but wonder why it took authorities so long to decide that the play was violating the law. I suspect that some very conservative NYC citizen with lots of money and influence persuaded a judge that the play was immoral.
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Something about winning votes, didn’t Basil say?
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Lots of photos in the New York Public Library Digital Gallery:
CLICK
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Great find.I think I’ll thumbnail link to them
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I tried to find the play online, but came across only the original French. It is here: http://storage.canalblog.com/31/26/296109/13637067.pdf . If someone speaks French and is happy to read it, would you mind telling us what you thought of the play? Thanks! 🙂
There are second-hand copies of the translation, often first editions, available to buy.
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My French is pretty crap, but I’ve read the first few pages. The stage is quite bare except for a few bits of lovely old furniture, and someone called Gisele is saying she doesn’t know what to wear for dinner and someone called Madame Marchand is telling her to wear the yellow dress that will do fine, and Gisele is saying she’s mad.
I’m guessing either the meaty bits haven’t started yet or they were really easily shocked in 1926 😉
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There is a used copy of Hornblow’s play available on amazon.com and also via WorldCat at several university libraries.
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I don’t know if you guys knew, but there is a book called “Forbidden Acts: Pioneering Gay & Lesbian Plays of the 20th Century” that has the complete script of The Captive printed in it. It seems like it is not a mere translation from the French version but really the version adapted by Arthur Hornblow, and that’s pretty cool. It is available in a google books preview where you can read almost the full play.
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I love Basil in that first photo, he looks so preoccupied and so vulnerable. I would love to have seen this play
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squee
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Was the cast actually put in jail? It’s so amazing something like that could happen!
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They were taken to Night Court and then released
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I believe my grandmother saw this play! I will ask my mother tomorrow to make sure, but if so how exciting
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I had some vague knowledge that BR was in a play that got shut down by the police, but was unaware of the details, or how willing our hero was to challenge convention through art. Awesome post, Neve.
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I had no idea the play was so ahead of its time.
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The play may have been, but not the review! Look at the words used to describe the lesbian relationship — “warped infatuation,” “revolting theme,” etc. Of course, my esteem for the Baz has increased by reading about this production.
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