''The Gypsy Girl'' is a play in four acts by
Hal Reid. The play also includes
incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as t ...
by composer
Alfred G. Robyn
Alfred George Robyn (April 29, 1860 – October 18, 1935) was an American composer, organist, conductor, and music educator. While his compositional output consisted of a wide range of music, he is best remembered as a composer of light operas and ...
,
and one song, "Swinging Under the Old Oak Tree", written by Louis Mortimer and Walter McClean which was sung by Dolly Kemper who portrayed the title heroine in the show. The work follows the adventures of Daisy Dean, "the Gypsy Girl", and her friends as they attempt to reacquire treasure stolen from the gypsies and thwart assassins threatening Daisy's life.
Performance history
''The Gypsy Girl'' premiered in
Camden, New Jersey
Camden is a city in and the county seat of Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Camden is part of the Delaware Valley metropolitan area and is located directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the 2020 ...
on March 2, 1905.
It then transferred to
Broadway where it opened at the
Star Theatre
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth make ...
on April 3, 1905.
The work notably featured a young
Mary Pickford
Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founde ...
, then acting under her birth name Gladys Smith, in the supporting role of the boy Freckles.
After it left Broadway, the play toured the United States with Pickford in the cast.
References
1905 plays
Broadway plays
{{1900s-play-stub