The Romantic Young Lady

Summary

1948 BBC studio production of Gregorio Martínez Sierra’s romantic comedy The Romantic Young Lady, given in the English version by Harley and Helen Granville-Barker.

Theatre play

The Romantic Young Lady [Sueño de una noche de agosto] by Gregorio Martínez Sierra (1881-1947) [more information]

Play synopsis

Roseirio lives with her grandmother and three brothers. She very much favours the equality of the sexes and would like to work, but her more conservative brothers think that she should aspire to marry well and live a more traditional woman’s life. One night while she is reading one of the sentimental novels that she likes so much, a hat blows into the room. When a man appears to claim it, he notices the book that Rosario is reading and writes her a letter of introduction to the author, who is, by coincidence, looking for a new secretary. When Rosario goes to apply for the secretarial position, she finds out that the stranger is the author she had admired so much, but is disillusioned about him when she witnesses a scene between him and a chorus girl. In spite of his pleas that she be his new secretary, Rosario refuses because she is hurt and angry. When she leaves, the author sits down to write a novel that he will call Sueno de una noche de agosto. In the third act, while Rosario and the grand-mother are saying the rosary to help pass the time, a hat comes through the window. The servant, Maria, throws a statue of a dog through the window that hits the author and owner of the hat on the head. He is brought into the house and is bandaged. The grandmother serves chocolate to the author and to Rosario and then conveniently falls asleep to allow them to make up their quarrel and make plans to marry.

(Source: adapted from Patricia Walker O’Connor, Women in the Theatre of Gregorio Martinez Sierra, PhD dissertation, University of Florida, 1962, available at http://archive.org/stream/womenintheatreof00oconrich/womenintheatreof00oconrich_djvu.txt; accessed 12 February 2014.)

Production history

Written in 1920 and published in The Plays of G. Martinez Sierra, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1922. Perfomed at Neighbourhood Playhouse, New York in May 1926.

Date of transmission

Tuesday 27 April 1948

Time

8.30-10.00pm

Channel

BBC Television

Production company

BBC

Credits

Producer

Philip Bate

Playwright

Gregorio Martínez Sierra (1881-1947)

Translator

Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946)

Translator

Helen Granville-Barker (?-1950)

Sets / Settings

Stephen Bundy

Cast

Michael Anthony	Pepe
John Benson	Mario
Wilfred Fletcher	Guillermo
Richard Goolden	Don Juan
Dora Gregory	Maria Pepa
Ursula Mason	Irene
Bernadette O’Farrell	Rosario
Athene Seyler (1889-1990)	Dona Barbarita
Margot van der Burgh	Amalia
Patrick Waddington	'The Apparition’
Richard Walter	Emilio

Additional details

Origination

Live from studio

Vision original

Monochrome

Later transmissions

Presented again at 3.00pm on Friday 30 April 1948.

Extant status

No archival copy is known to exist.

Play tags

comedy; Spanish drama

Print sources

Title

Radio Times, 23 April 1948 (Magazine)

Linking notes

article, p. 24; listing, p. 27