Trip to Niagara, a; or, Travellers in America

Trip to Niagara, a; or, Travellers in America (1828), a play by William Dunlap. [Bowery Theatre, in repertory.] The English Mr. Wentworth ( John Fisher) and his sister, Amelia ( Mrs. Hughes), come to America on a visit with a fellow Englishman, John Bull ( W. B. Chapman), and an Irishman, Dennis Dougherty ( Henry Wallack). Wentworth likes nothing he sees, but his sister seems delighted by both the land and its citizens. Bull would like to marry Amelia, and she agrees, provided he can get her brother to stop being critical. Bull succeeds and Wentworth proclaims, “When the film of prejudice is removed from the eye, man sees his fellow man of every clime a brother . . . we shall have reason to bless our Trip to Niagara.” The play was one of the first to give credit in its programs and advertisements to its designers. In a way, though not common practice at the time, this was only natural since even Dunlap confessed he had written the work as a “running accompaniment to the more important product of the Scene‐painter.” The panoramic effects made this one of the earliest important American spectacles and gave Dunlap, ironically, his biggest commercial success. The theatre reused the panoramas for other plays.