Melodrama

The Red Garter is unquestionably Boston's greatest contribution to the glory of the nineteenth century since Henry James.

To call it a bar would be wrong. It is a saloon. And very much of the right sort--luxurious red interior, brass lamp fixtures, an exquisite Wurlitzer nickelodeon and, oy course, peanuts to throw at the villain of the melodrama.

The melodrama season started there this week with a veritable product of the late nineteenth century, Millard Grosby's She Was Only a Farmer's Daughter.

The plot is appropriately complex. Milly, a lily-white picture of virtue, the orphan daughter of a farmer, has just returned from a year of schooling in the city. With her first whiff of the pure country air, she again falls in love with her childhood sweetheart, the galumphing but more-than-pure, Osgood. He asks her hand and, in reply, she delivers the fatal lines, "Oh Osgood, that cannot be. The die is cast."

For it turns out that one of the evil city's most wicked creatures, Mulberry Foxhall, got there first. On the eve of her marriage to Mulberry, however, Milly discovers that he is already married to another. And so, affianced and unwilling, in love with another, what shall she do?

There is no time for an answer, for it seems that none other than Mulberry himself, with a brand new bride, has arrived on the scene (to the tune of the Dragnet theme and much hissing). This time, Mulberry has snagged the innocent daughter of businessman Harvey Smith, whose name breathes dollars. With piercing insight, Milly recognizes that Mulberry is in love with Alice Smith only for her money, and she immediately plunges to the crux of her hopeless moral dilemma.

In the meantime, an interchange between Mulberry and Mr. Smith has proved that the stalwart businessman Harvey Smith is, in fact, the ex-convict Hank Smith, and that Mulberry Foxhall shared Hank's cell under the name of Pete Malloy. To insure that the marriage will go on, and to gain partnership in Smith's business, Mulberry threatens blackmail. By this time, it would seem that truth and justice and virtue are hopelessly ensnared in the awful net of urban business, but Osgood arrives on the scene just in time to overpower Mulberry, discover on his person the stolen jewels of Smith's daughter, and give Mulberry the grand boot. Milly is deliriously grateful, but Osgood modestly puts her off with the words, "Aw shucks, Milly, Al Isn't do nothin." Then Milly discovers she's inherited $25,000 and she and Osgood agree to marry. Milly gets tears in her eyes and, in a heart-rending final scene, cries "Now we can pay ox the mortgage on the old homestead."

The acting, direction, scenery, music and beer all do full justice to the script. It is a show not to be missed.