The Green Bay Tree
| The Green Bay Tree | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Mordaunt Shairp |
| Date premiered | 20 October 1933 |
| Place premiered |
Cort Theatre New York City, New York |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Drama |
| Setting | Mr. Dulcimer's Mayfair flat, Mr. Owen's Camden Town house |
The Green Bay Tree is a 1933 three-act drama written by Mordaunt Shairp that explores a "half-suggested homosexual relationship" between a man and his protégé or, in the words of one critic "a rich hot-house sybarite" and someone "he adopted at a tender age and has reared in emasculating luxury". It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1933-1934.
The play premiered at St Martin's Theatre in London's West End on 25 January 1933 and had a highly successful run of 217 performances, closing on 19 August 1933. It was directed by Marguerite Rea and the cast included Hugh Williams (the author's stepson) as Julian, Catherine Lacey as Leonora, Frank Vosper as Mr. Dulcimer, Herbert Lomas as Mr. Owen and Henry Hewitt as Trump.
Its Broadway premiere was produced and staged by Jed Harris with scenic design by Robert Edmond Jones. The play was a hit, running for 166 performances from 20 October 1933 to March 1934 at the Cort Theatre. Laurence Olivier appeared as Julian, Jill Esmond as Leonora, James Dale as Mr. Dulcimer, O. P. Heggie as Mr Owen and Leo G. Carroll as Trump. It was Heggie's final Broadway role. Harris's direction was lauded for its subtlety. Decades later, Olivier described the play as "a wonderful piece of work... brilliantly done and sensationally successful". In the New York Times, Brooks Atkinson wrote: "When the curtain rings down after a long, tense evening, you feel that the entire story has been brilliantly and forcefully told.... The theater has unleashed one of its thunderbolts."
The play was also produced at the Northampton Repertory in England in March 1934 with Errol Flynn as Trump. In 1935, when Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour was prohibited by the British censor, its producer, Alec L. Rea, was asked to compare it to The Green Bay Tree. He said:
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