The Man from Blankley's

The Man from Blankley's is a comedy by "F. Anstey" (pseudonym for Thomas Anstey Guthrie, )[]

The original text

Apparently first published in Mr Punch, the first text of The Man from Blankley's. A Story in Scenes was published in The Man from Blankley's and Other Sketches by F. Anstey. Longmans, Green, and Company in 1893 and reprinted by Longmans, Green in 1901. Later, after having been widely performed and made into a film, the stage text was published as The Man from Blankley's: A Comedy of the Early Nineties by Hodder and Stoughton, 1927.

According to the Wikipedia entry on The Man from Blankley's, the play premiered in London in 1903 at the Prince of Wales Theatre and was revived in 1906 at the Haymarket Theatre to much success. On Broadway it opened at the Criterion Theatre, on 16 to November 1903, followed by runs in Washington DC, Detroit and Chicago.

Translations and adaptations

Twice adapted as film, in 1920 by Paramount Pictures as The Fourteenth Man, starring Robert Warwick, and in 1930 as The Man from Blankley's, directed by Alfred E. Green with John Barrymore and Loretta Young.[1] Both films are now considered lost.

Performance history in South Africa

1901: Performed as The Man from Blankley's by the Sass and Nelson Company in the Opera House, Cape Town, as part of a season of plays that commenced on 11 May.

Sources

Facsimile version of The Man from Blankley's and Other Sketches, Google E-book[2]

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1932. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1912. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p.409

Go to ESAT Bibliography