Escaping life as a dejected wife
IN this week’s Memory Lane, we take a look back at a play staged by an amateur theatre group in 1939.
Our regular nostalgia contributor Peter Fisher has sent us a selection of pictures from the musical play, Katinka, which was performed six times by Bacup and Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society at the Empire Theatre from March 6, 1939.
It tells the story of Boris Strogoff’s marriage to Katinka, the daughter of Countess Verewoff.
At the beginning of the play, drunken Russian Boris performs the ‘ceremony of the whip’, which is designed to give him full mastery over his bride.
Among the guests at Boris and Katinka’s wedding is Ivan Dimitri, Katinka’s former love interest.
He has travelled from Paris to discover why Katinka has ignored his letters and agreed to marry Boris.
Katinka and Ivan find out that their letters have been intercepted, so they never received each other’s correspondence.
Their feelings towards each other, however, have not changed and they enlist the help of Petrov, an old family servant, and Thaddens T Hopper, an American who Ivan met on his travels.
Katinka uses the passport of Hopper’s wife, Helen, to travel to Anzuli, trying to trace Olga, Boris’ former wife, who Petrov believes is hiding in a harem to escape her miserable life with her husband.
Hopper takes a room in Anzuli in Persia with Katinka, pretending she is his wife. There he is confronted by his real wife, who insists on joining him at the hotel.
M Knopf, the owner of a cafe in Paris, agrees to employ Katinka in his troupe of Circassian Dancing Girls, which he is taking back to Paris, thus removing her from Helen’s path.
However Helen is then captured by Arif Bey and taken into his harem.
Boris arrives to search for his bride, while Arif releases Helen, who leaves to go with Knopf to Paris.
The play then moves on to Knopf’s cafe in Paris, where Nashan, who is in charge of the dancing girls, has established Katinka as a successful singer. When Tatiana and Boris arrive, Hopper realises that Boris will recognise his wife’s voice and bribes Knopf to announce that there will be no singer that night.
Helen suspects Hopper’s involvement, so provides a greater bribe to ensure Katinka appears.
Nashan finally intervenes, announcing that she is Olga, Boris’ wife. This leaves Ivan and Katinka free to love each other, and leads to a reconciliation between Helen and Hopper, so that the curtain can come down on a happy ending.
Our first image of the week (Picture 1) shows members of the cast. In the picture are A Baron as Pierre, A Greenwood as Varenka, G Greenwood as Thaddeus T Hopper, E Welford as Katinka, H Smith as Ivan Dimitri and J Altham as Knopf.
Also in the picture are G Lord as Anf Bey, Doris Tranter as Tatiana, M Spencer as Nashan and H Hindle as Abdul.
The next shot (Picture 2) shows the ‘ceremony of the whip’ being performed.
In Picture 3, Jack Altham and K Hindle are performing the tango.
In Picture 4 are A Wilson as Petrov, F Simpson as Boris Strogoff, H Smith as Ivan Dimitri, A Greenwood as Varenka, E Welford as Katinka and Doris Tranter as Tatiana.
The rest of the pictures show scenes from the play. In Picture 5, the line ‘are they all as beautiful as this one’ is spoken. In Picture 6 the characters are toasting Katinka.
Finally, we have a shot of the front cover of the souvenir programme for the show (Picture 7).
If these pictures bring back memories, please get in touch.
Thanks to all our nostalgia contributors.