3-086-449 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Greek Slave," the new musical comedy at Daly's Theatre, 1898. London stage production. 'Marcus Pomponius, Mr. Rutland Barrington; Maia, Miss Marie Tempest; Iris, Miss Letty Lind; Antonia, Miss Moody; Archias, Mr. Scott Russell; Diomed, Mr. C. Hayden Coffin; Manlius, Mr. C. Magrath; Heliodorus, Mr. Huntley Wright...few will trouble about the accuracy of its classical details...Here it is then - in Imperial Rome - that [librettist] Owen Hall has developed some pretty complications for our amusement. They all turn on the plotting of a little band of love-sick slaves and their master, a Persian necromancer, who, to gratify a Roman Prefect, induce a haughty Princess to fall in love with a Greek slave, posing as a living statue of Eros...the play falls all to pieces, and degenerates into a variety show, wherein the various members of the company take their turns at singing or dancing...the chief honours of the first night fell...to Miss Marie Tempest, one of our few comic opera prime donne; to Mr. Hayden Coffin, still the most artistic of baritones...Miss Letty Lind...had one delicious little dance...we must be grateful for the dry humour of Mr. Rutland Barrington as the Prefect and Mr. Huntley Wright's eccentric dancing as the necromancer.' From Illustrated London News, 1898.