Veterans Theatre to Offer World Premiere of Latest Gerhardi Play

Both the Veterans Theatre Workshop and playwright William Gerhardi's "I Was King in Babylon" will have their premiere unveilings Wednesday, December 4, at the Rindge Technical Auditorium two blocks east of Memorial Hall, Jerome T. Kilty '49, director of the Workshop, announced yesterday.

With a professional London production planned for this winter, New York producers looking forward to a showing in the fall, and Paramount Pictures already owners of the motion picture rights, the first night audience will be well dotted with out-of-town critical eyes.

Most experienced of the cast will be Marie Heath, ex-Old Vie associate now living in Cambridge while her husband studies at the graduate school.

The plot of Gerhardi's satire on reincarnation revolves about a character called Hector Rigoletto, a butcher who is mystically able to determine who all the other characters were in their "former existences." Rigoletto himself, played by Mendy Welagal '45, had been Aristotle and Abelard.

The romantic lead, a chap called David Kings-Cross who is identified variously as King Solomon and Alexander the Great, is to be handled by Ed A. Franklin '47.

Playing opposite him will be Miss Claire Gilman, Radcliffe '47, who in the course of the action has an illegitimate child by Kings-Cross. In some previous existence, however, either as the daughter of Ghenghis Khan or as a Japanese juggler-girl, she had been his wife, so Watch and Warders in the audience will be able to go home unoffended, and the play will be allowed to continue on the beards for its entire four-night run.