The Drama of Heyville

暂无简介Hod Mullins, the actor-manager of the Demosthenes Dramatic Club of Heyville, comes to New York to find material for his aspiring clubmates to exert their efforts upon. Chance directs him to a theater in which \"The Union Spy\" is playing. Hod, affected by the dramatic merits of the piece, makes exhaustive notes and, on his return to Heyville, compiles a pirated edition of the play. After enormous difficulties with regard to the selection of a cast, costuming, etc., have been more or less successfully overcome, the play is produced. In the original, \"The Union Spy\" is the story of a Southern girl who falls in love with a lieutenant in the Union Secret Service. The girl is also loved by a Confederate officer, who naturally hates the hero. The spy escapes from his enemy by hiding in a haystack, fights a duel with him in the girl's home and finally wins his sweetheart in the very jaws of death. Hod's version of the play is similar in plot, but curiously different in its general effect. For one thing. Heyville's stage facilities are scarcely adequate. Then, too, the actors have trifling personal eccentricities which are hardly common on the regular stage. They have an alarming habit of missing their cues, and a tendency to confuse the action by appearing and disappearing in unexpected places. For instance, in the dramatic climax of the production, when the hero, after heroically refusing to surrender, waves his sword and summons his men from their ambush, a rather disturbing effect is produced by the entire failure of the hidden troopers to respond.