Revival in the Rockies

One evening last week a file of cars climbed craggy Virginia Canyon 50 mi. west of Denver, rolled suddenly into the narrow street of an ancient mining town, wedged in a gulch a mile and a half above sea level. Above the main street the houses of Central City hang on the gulch walls like loose bark. Oldtime shops, dance halls, faro games, were going full blast, full of light & noise. Beaver-hatted men and bustled women strolled past. Lantern-faced miners smiled from their doorways. No Rip Van Winkle apparition in the mountains, all this was Colorado's second annual Central City Play Festival, blowing on the cold ashes of the oldtime mining boom town. In the centre of Central City (year-round population: 300) is the massive stone Opera House where once Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson and Rose Coghlan played to rowdy frontier audiences, and where the Passion Play was given in stereopticon pictures. The contractor Brothers McFarlane built it in 1878 on the site of a horse corral. When the mining boom spread away to west & south, mountain rats took Central City over. Rain streaked the Rhenish landscape on the Opera House curtain and the gaudy murals done by a forgotten painter named Massman. In 1931 the McFarlane heirs gave the sorry pile to Denver University as a landmark of Colorado's brawling past, past enough for Coloradoans to be proud of. But the University could not afford to repair the vast, draughty stage, prop up the collapsing roof. To the rescue came Denver's able, elderly Art Patron Ann Evans, socialite president of Evans Investment Co., daughter of Colorado's second territorial Governor, John Evans. She soon made Central City a Denver socialite fad. To rebuild the Opera House she sold its original 750 broad-bottomed hickory chairs for $100 apiece, formed the Central City Opera House Association. Denver socialites got down on their hands & knees to scrub the floors, chip away caked dirt. Artist Allen Tupper True restored the murals and ceiling. Somebody contributed a new crystal chandelier. Last year Denverites trooped into the opera house for the first festival: a revival of oldtime Camllle, played by woebegone Lillian Gish staged by Designer Robert Edmond Jones (TIME, Aug. 1, 1932). Last week the play was The Merry Widow with Austrian Composer Franz Lehar's nostalgic score.* Most of last week's socialite audience came in period costume, the women in Floradora dresses, the men in early 20th Century costume. To prepare their setting for a fancy dress ball they had taken over Central City's Teller House, next door to the Opera House, restored its grandeur of 1873 when President Grant stepped into it on silver paving slabs. The presidential suite was last week a museum, complete with President Grant's huge mahogany bed. The ballroom was readied for a fancy dress ball after the play.

When the Rhenish curtain slowly rose in the Opera House the audience, including Colorado's onetime U. S. Senator Lawrence Cowle Phipps, second Territorial Governor Evans' great nephew John Jr., Denver University's Chancellor and Mrs. Frederick Maurice Hunter, Film Actor Harold Lloyd's mother Elizabeth Fraser Lloyd, onetime Central City resident, saw a spangled, glittering period setting by Designer Jones. In the chorus they spotted socialite members of Denver singing and dancing schools who were working for fun. The professional cast, smoothly directed by Mr Jones, ably unrolled The Merry Widow's famed plot. From the mythical Balkan kingdom of Marsovia to Paris comes impoverished Prince Danilo (Metropolitan Opera Baritone Richard Bonelli), Embassy Attache, glum under his contract to marry a rich widow he has not seen. Because his true love Sonia Sadoya (Manhattan Actress Natalie Hall) is a rich widow he refuses to marry her. When Natalie (Metropolitan Mezzo-Soprano Gladys Swarthout), wife of the Marsovian Ambassador, compromises herself behind a rose arbor with a man not her husband, Sonia gallantly saves the situation by ducking behind the arbor, taking the married woman's place, disillusioning Prince Danilo. It is but the work of a third act to reillusion him, reveal that Sonia is in fact the rich widow he is contracted to marry. Last week Denver socialites stomped, whistled and shouted their enthusiasm. Because of the success of last year's one-week run, the Festival's sponsors scheduled The Merry Widow for a twelve-night run. Next year Director Jones, who is under a five-year contract, plans to do Hamlet and Carmen on alternating nights.

*Written by two obscure Viennese journalists, Victor Leon and Leo Stein, The Merry Widow was first produced in Vienna in 1905, in the U.S. in 1907, infecting the U. S. with two forms of "Merrvwidowmania": the Humwaltz and the Whistlewaltz, pre-War fads. It was last revived in Manhattan in 1932.

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