Timothy Mayer's Play 'Prince Erie' Wins 3rd Phyllis Anderson Award

He lives. Timothy S. Mayer '66-?, exdean of Harvard theatre and musical bon vivant extraordinaire, has won the Phylis Anderson Award for his play Prince Erie.

Like the last Anderson play, Treason at West Point, Prince Erie is vaguely historical. Probably that is the only point of comparison. Treason, produced at the Loeb two years ago, met with a blast of hostile critical wind. Some people even speculated that the Loeb administration, learning a quick lesson from Treason's fate, would avoid producing this year's Anderson play at all.

On Tuesday night Loeb associate director Daniel Seltzer squelched that rumor with the announcement of Mayer's triumph.

Production plans for Mayer's play are still indefinite. The HDC has not formally decided to produce Prince Erie this Spring, and may postpone production till next Fall.

The winning play is based on the unlikely life-story of Jim Fisk, whose remarkable coups in the world of finance culminated in his death-by-duel in 1876. Prince Erie will be the first musical (or semi-musical) to win the Anderson award.

Its predecessors are Treason, the drama of Benedict Arnold, and the non-historical Pageant of the Awkward Shadows, by Thomas Babe '62.