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.

Rathbone and Elsie Ferguson in "The Grand Duchess and the Waiter", 1925

"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.]

 

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All original content is © Marcia Jessen, 2007