Alabama

Alabama (1891), a play by Augustus Thomas. [Madison Square Theatre, 37 perf.] A quarter‐century after the Civil War, Colonel Preston ( J. H. Stoddart) is still an unrepentant Confederate, still advocating slavery and condemning the North for destroying his way of life. When the hated Northern‐owned railroads come to set tracks along his property, Preston at first fails to recognize that the engineer is his son, Captain Davenport ( Maurice Barrymore), who had gone off as a young man to fight for the Union and who had not been home since. Davenport puts his father's failing estate in order and frees his old sweetheart ( May Brookyn) and her son ( Henry Woodruff) from the clutches of a villainous brother‐in‐law ( Walden Ramsay). Thomas's plot, though it confronted still festering sectional differences, was secondary to his studies of various homespun types such as Squire Tucker, “a large baby of fifty . . . tied for life to the apron strings of his mother.” The play was produced by A. M. Palmer in what was perceived as a highly realistic manner, even to sending magnolia perfume wafting through the theatre during a scene in a magnolia grove. Previous commitments forced Palmer to take Alabama on the road while it was still drawing large houses in Manhattan. Business on tour was so poor at first that Palmer, suffering from a succession of New York failures, was forced to relinquish the Madison Square Theatre, and so ended his career as one of New York's most distinguished producers. Ironically, Alabama eventually caught on with hinterland audiences and remained popular for more than a decade.