Both Your Houses
Both Your Houses is a 1933 play written by American playwright Maxwell Anderson. It was produced by the Theatre Guild and staged by Worthington Miner with scenic design by Arthur P. Segal. It opened at the Royale Theatre on March 5, 1933 and ran for 72 performances closing May 6, 1933. It was awarded the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1932–1933.
Both Your Houses | |
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Written by | Maxwell Anderson |
Date premiered | March 6, 1933 |
Place premiered | Royale Theatre New York City, New York |
Original language | English |
Genre | Drama |
Setting | Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C. |
The title is an allusion to Mercutio's line "a plague on both your houses" in Romeo and Juliet.[1]
Plot
Reception
Reviewing a 1992 production, Variety described Houses as reminiscent of — but "far more bleak and despairing than" — Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Born Yesterday, calling it "bitter" and "cynical", and assessing the play's message as "heavy-handed" and its characters as "tend(ing) to two-dimensionality."[2]
Cast
- Morris Carnovsky as Levering
- Russell Collins as Peebles
- Mary Philips as Bus
- J. Edward Bromberg as Wingblatt
- Jerome Cowan as Sneden
- Aleta Freel as Marjorie Gray
- Walter C. Kelly as Solomon Fitzmaurice
- Oscar Polk as Mark
- Robert Shayne as Eddie Wister
- Shepperd Strudwick as Alan McClean
- Joseph Sweeney as Ebner
- John Butler as Merton
- William Foran as Dell
- John F. Morrissey as Farnum
- Jane Seymour as Miss McMurty
- Robert Strange as Simeon Gray
References
- Review: “Both Your Houses” Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, in the Hyde Park Herald, by Anne Spiselman; published November 5, 2014; retrieved December 3, 2014
- Review: ‘Both Your Houses’, by Tom Jacobs, in Variety; published August 28, 1992; retrieved May 30, 2016