The Torch-bearers

   Opening on 29 August 1922 at the 48th Street Theatre, the hilarious send-up of little theatre by George Kelly ran for 128 performances. Mary Boland played the charming young society woman who is recruited as a last-minute replacement in the leading role of a play to be performed for charity. Act 1 shows the rehearsal at her home. Act 2 is set backstage during the disastrous performance when someone in the audience faints. In act 3, after the show, the wife learns that it was her husband who fainted in horror at the artistic travesty on stage. Will the marriage survive? Oddly enough, the target of the play's satire—amateur theatre groups— produced this play regularly for decades.