The New Boy

From ESAT
Jump to navigation Jump to search

There appear to have been two plays by this name, both from the mid 1890s:

The New Boy: a comic farce by Arthur Law

Arthur Law (1844-1913)[1] was apparently inspired to write the play by F. Anstey’s popular book Vice Versa. The New Boy opened at Terry's Vaudeville Theatre, London, on February 28, 1894, with Weedon Grossmith in the title role, and finally closed in April 1895. The first American performance of was in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on September 14, 1894.

The posters for Law's play are speculated to have been the source of the famous Mad Magazine cover image of "Alfred E. Neumann". (See the entry on this in Yesterday's Papers, an inspiring blog by cartoonist, illustrator and storyteller John Adcock at http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-face-of-new-boy.html.)

The New Boy: a comedy by R.R. Lumley

The source for this attribution is F.C.L. Bosman (1980, p. 403, citing D.C. Boonzaier), who ascribes the play performed in South Africa by the Ernest Searelle Comedy Company to "R.R. Lumley". Given the fact that the named of the company is almost certainly wrong (it is probably the Luscombe Searelle Comedy Company), it is highly probable that this was also Law's text.