It was the heroic treatment administered by experts to save what looked
like unmistakable demise after the first Baltimore performance, and all
the while Ida Blair sat mutely by, trying to probe through the actuality
of her play or what was left of it, actually in the acting.
"The Steel Trap," as it was renamed, played to indifferent reviews and
receipts the remainder of the Baltimore engagement, and lost money in
Washington, but to the director, Bruce Visigoth, and certainly to Lilly,
looked a potential property.
So after two weeks the play was removed, revamped, recast, still another
play diagnostician called in, and under his surgery the third and fourth
acts combined, and the original role of love story made to predominate
what sociological note the play still contained. After an October tryout
in Stamford and a New York opening of still doubtful reception, when the
production hung between life and death and all the well-known
exigencies of oxygen were applied in the form of "papering" the house
with two weeks of free tickets, press-agenting, _et al._, the public
decided to like it.
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