Big Bonanza, The

Big Bonanza, The (1875), a comedy in four acts by Augustin Daly. [Fifth Avenue Theatre, 137 perf.] Lucretia Cawallader ( Annie Graham) is a stuffy, domineering wife, annoyed by her husband Jonathan ( Charles Fisher) and worried about her daughter of marriageable age, Eugenia ( Fanny Davenport). When she learns that her daughter was escorted from the train station by a shabbily dressed young man, she is horrified. Her distress is interrupted by the arrival of Jonathan's cousin, Professor Agassiz Cawallader ( James Lewis), who argues with her husband about money management. Jonathan gives the Professor $30,000 and bets him that he cannot invest it successfully for a month. The Professor's problems learning the ways of the market are compounded by the arrival of his wife's nephew Bob ( John Drew), a generous, amiable young man fresh from the mines out west. In the end Agassiz's buying and selling come to naught, but he learns to his relief that Jonathan's clerk disobeyed his instructions and he has lost nothing. At the same time, Jonathan and Lucretia discover that Bob was the shabbily dressed young man who helped Eugenia at the station and they agree to let their daughter marry him. Producer‐author Daly based his play on Gustav von Moser's German comedy Ultimo and its success relieved him of financial difficulties at his new theatre. The play itself succeeded despite largely negative reviews. William Winter wrote that the piece “has no claim to consideration. The dialogue drivels through four acts of hopeless commonplace in which there is not one spark of wit, not one bright thought, not even a gleam of smartness.” Audiences disagreed and the play was so popular that, because of loose copyright laws, several competing versions of von Moser's play were also mounted. Daly's was by far the most successful, and was revived profitably as late as 1899.