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Playwright
Augustus Thomas
Performance Dates
October 26, 1935
Creative Team
Director..........................................J. F. Smith
Assistant........................................Evelyn Brehm
Stage Manager..............................Foster Elliot
Business Managers.......................Jane Burdge and Charles Harding
Music.............................................Vodra Williams
Synopsis
Jack Brookfield, a professional gambler, in whose rooms the play opens, is believed by his friends to be possessed of an extraordinary personal magnetism. It is said that this gift is shared by his sister, Mrs. Campbell and her daughter Viola. The interior decorations of Brookfield’s magnificent house have been planned by Clay Whipple, who is in love with Viola. On seeing that a rival of his is talking earnestly to her at the opera, he proposes to her and is accepted. He kills a man accidentally at the house of Jack Brookfield, and is charged with murder by Frank Hardmuth, the assistant District Attorney, who had been talking to Viola at the opera, and who now asks Jack Brookfield for support in his love suit. Brookfield declines to attempt to influence his niece. In a first trial Clay is convicted, but he is able to secure a second. While the jury are deliberating, Brookfield attempts to concentrate the psychic force of the community upon them with the object of securing an acquittal. Before the trial, which resulted in an acquittal, had come to an end, Brookfield had caused to be published a charge against Hardmuth of having planned and procured the assassination of the governor of Kentucky, whose place he is now anxious to secure. Hardmuth rushes to meet Brookfield and points a Derringer at him but by hypnotic influence is forced to drop it. In the end Brookfield, as he feels that he himself has often been acting against the law, and that his success at cards has been merely due to his hypnotic powers, decides to help Hardmuth, of whom the police are in search, across the line.
Disciplines
Acting | Dance | Theatre and Performance Studies | Theatre History
Keywords
Otterbein Theatre, Performing Arts, College Theater
Recommended Citation
Otterbein University, "The Witching Hour" (1935). 1907-1958 Productions. 46.
https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/production_1907-1958/46