Chapter I: Foreword

With the production of “The Detour,” about a year ago, I managed to secure some measure of success in drawing a simple picture of life as it is lived on a Long Island farm; encouraged by this, I am now turning toward my own people, the people of northern New England, whose folklore, up to the present time, has been quite neglected in our theatre. I mean, of course, that few serious attempts have been made in the direction of a genre comedy of this locality. Here I have at least tried to draw a true picture of these people, and I am of their blood, born of generations of Northern Maine, small-town folk, and brought up among them. In my memory of them is little of the “Rube” caricature of the conventional theatre; they are neither buffoons nor sentimentalists, and at least neither their faults nor their virtues are borrowed from the melting pot but are the direct result of their own heritage and environment.

OWEN DAVIS.

1923.

ICEBOUND

“Icebound” was originally produced in New York, February 10, 1923, with the following cast:

HENRY JORDAN _John Westley_

EMMA, his wife _Lotta Linthicum_

NETTIE, her daughter by a former marriage _Boots Wooster_

SADIE FELLOWS, once Sadie Jordan, a widow _Eva Condon_

ORIN, her son _Andrew J. Lawlor, Jr._

ELLA JORDAN, the unmarried sister _Frances Neilson_

DOCTOR CURTIS _Lawrence Eddinger_

JANE CROSBY, a second cousin of the Jordans _Phyllis Povah_

JUDGE BRADFORD _Willard Robertson_

BEN JORDAN _Robert Ames_

HANNAH _Edna May Oliver_

JIM JAY _Charles Henderson_

ACT ONE.

THE PARLOR OF THE JORDAN HOMESTEAD, 4 P.M., October, 1922.

ACT TWO.

THE SITTING ROOM OF THE JORDAN HOMESTEAD, Two months later. Afternoon.