Fashion; or, Life in New York

Fashion; or, Life in New York (1845), a comedy by Anna Cora Mowatt.[Park Theatre, 20 perf.] The upstart Mrs. Tiffany ( Mrs. Barry) is determined to make her way in the world. To this end she hires a large staff and teaches herself French, dropping “jenny‐says‐quois” and “ee‐lights” everywhere she goes. She rejects all her daughter's suitors, insisting instead that Serphina ( Miss K. Horn) marry the Count di Jolimaitre ( Mr. Crisp). A thorn in Mrs. Tiffany's side is brusque but honest Adam Trueman ( Mr. Chippendale), a fine specimen of Yankee integrity. Trueman is an old friend of Mr. Tiffany ( Thomas Barry), a not entirely honest businessman, who is being blackmailed by one of his daughter's suitors, Snobson ( Mr. Fisher). Trueman's long‐lost granddaughter helps expose the Count as merely an old French chef whose real name is Gustave Treadmill. With this brought out into the open, Trueman is able to persuade Tiffany to send his wife and daughter to the country to learn simple values and to rid him of Snobson. Edgar Allan Poe, then a drama critic with the Broadway Journal, observed, “Compared with the generality of modern dramas, it is a good play—compared with most American dramas it is a very good one.” The play's run was an American record for its day, and it has been revived regularly ever since, most recently Off Broadway in 2003. One notable revival, produced by Kenneth MacGowan, Robert Edmond Jones, and Eugene O'Neill at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1924, chalked up 235 performances.