|
The Grand Duchess and the Waiter
A play in three acts by Alfred Savoir. Opened at the Lyceum Theater, New York City, October 13, 1925, and lasted 31 performances. Produced by Charles Frohman, staged by Frank Reicher.
Cast of characters
| Albert | Basil Rathbone |
| Matard | Elmer Brown |
| The Grand Duchess Xenia | Elsie Ferguson |
| The Grand Duke Paul | Paul McAllister |
| Countess Avaloff | Alison Skipworth |
| The Grand Duke Peter | Frederick Worlock |
| Cloche | Lawrence Cecil |
| Monsieur Hess | Ernest Stallard |
| Henrietta | Olga Lee |
| Baron Nikolaieff | E.M. Hast |
| Prince Barovski | Lawrence Cecil |
| Baroness Nikolaievna | Olga Tristjansky |
| A Man | Converse Tyler |
| A Lady | Geraldine Beckwith |
| Another Lady | Norma Havey |
| Another Man | Frank Roberts |
| Act I — Lounge of the Palace
Hotel, Montreux, Switzerland Act II — Boudoir of the Grand Duchess in the same Hotel. Act III — A Cabaret at Deauville. |
 |
"The Grand Duchess Xenia, run out of Russia by the Bolshevists, is staying
at a Swiss hotel with a small but loyal band of royal relatives, living on her
pawned jewels. Albert, the waiter, falls hopelessly in love with her and she
undertakes to cure his passion by making him a sort of valet de chambre and
submitting him to the most humiliating of intimacies. Then she confess her love
and learns that he is the son of the president of the Swiss republic learning
the hotel business from the rugs up. She hates and dismisses him for being a
republican, but he follows her to Deauville, where she opens a Russian cabaret.
There she finds use for him."
[from The Best Plays of 1925-26, ed. by Burns Mantle (Dodd, Mead and
Co., 1926), page 471.]
