The Captive

Synopsis

Irène is a lesbian tortured by her love for Madame d'Aiguines, but pretending engagement to Jacques. Though Irène attempts to leave Mme. d'Aiguines and marry Jacques, she returns to the relationship, saying that it is "a prison to which I must return captive, despite myself". Mme. d'Aiguines is not seen in the play, but leaves behind nosegays of violets for Irène, as a symbol of her love.

Broadway cast

Ann Trevor – Gisele De Montcel

Winifred Fraser – Mlle. Marchand

Minna Phillips – Josephine

Norman Trevor – De Montcel

Helen Menken – Irène De Montcel

Basil Rathbone – Jacques Virieu

Arthur Lewis – Georges

Ann Andrews – Françoise Meillant

Arthur Wontner – D'Aiguines

Production history

La Prisonnière was written by Édouard Bourdet and premiered at Théâtre Fémina in Paris on 6 March 1926. The production included Mlle Sylvie and M. Pierre Blanchar. The production's metteur en scène was André Gailhard.

Max Reinhardt staged La Prisonnière in Vienna and Berlin, where it set records for attendance. It was then put on in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium.

Broadway

Producer and director Gilbert Miller, working with the Charles Frohman Company, announced his intentions to bring La Prisonnière to Broadway. Arthur Hornblow, Jr. adapted and translated the play to the English language, with the title The Captive.

The Captive debuted at the Empire Theatre in New York on 29 September 1926. The play, staged by Gilbert Miller, cast Helen Menken as Irène and Basil Rathbone as Jacques. Both Rathbone and Arthur Wontner (who portrayed D'Aiguines) later had roles as Sherlock Holmes in film. The play ran for 160 performances. It was among the first Broadway plays to have female homosexuality as its subject.[1] The audience for the play was said to be predominantly female, with one account placing the figure at almost 80%.

Publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose mistress's niece was lesbian, was personally biased against the play. Hearst newspapers the New York Daily Mirror and the New York American ran articles condemning the play. The Captive was put on trial for indecency by the Citizens' Play Jury and was cleared of charges. Led by John S. Sumner, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice campaigned alongside the Catholic Church and other religious organizations to close The Captive and other plays on obscenity charges. Religious groups and women's clubs also expressed disapproval of the play. A former president of the Colonial Dames of America informed Miller that she would use her influence "to prevent such an affront to American womanhood."

Theater critic Brooks Atkinson wrote a review of The Captive for The New York Times on 30 September 1926, praising it as "a long, engrossing, haunting play . . . an expert dramatic production."

The character Irène is depicted as a lesbian who is feminine, attractive, and seductive. Sherrie Inness writes that "the play dismantles the idea of the lesbian as the easily recognizable Other (i.e., the mannish lesbian)," instead offering a lesbian prototype more threatening to the hegemony of heterosexuality. The age difference between Irène and Madame d'Aiguines was a type of relationship often portrayed in mid-20th century depictions of lesbians and reinforced Teresa de Lauretis's conjecture that the loss of the mother produces relationships of that type.

New York County District Attorney Joab H. Banton received pressure from the Society for the Prevention of Vice. When mayor Jimmy Walker went on vacation to Cuba in the winter of 1927, acting mayor Joseph "Holy Joe" McKee ordered Banton to "banish nudity and obscenity" from Broadway theatres. Plainclothes police were ordered to monitor The Captive and Mae West's play SEX on 5 February. Four days later, Banton issued an order to have the casts of both plays arrested.