The Golden Age of Indianapolis Theaters

3. A War’s Effect and Another Theater Is Born

3 AWar’sEffectand AnotherTheaterIsBorn The Metropolitan had a busy if not especially profitable third season (1860–61). Valentine Butsch brought in a stock company that featured a “celebrated comedienne and vocalist,” Marian McCarthy , and a “well known comedian,” Felix Vincent. The company listed eighteen performers. Home-based stock companies were used by many American theaters during the nineteenth century. This reduced the uncertainties of travel, which still had its problems, and the system was less costly. However, prior to the Civil War, it did not guarantee success in Indianapolis. Evidence that the Metropolitan’s company was not breaking any financial records was apparent when the season suddenly ended early in March 1861. Six weeks later, the country was in a war. Patriotism reached a new level, and it was felt that a theater could provide an outlet for expressing it. The company was recalled for a theater reopening April 25, and it remained there well into the month of August. Just days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, a patriotic concert was held at the theater featuring Mme. Ines Fabbri, who sang “The StarSpangled Banner” in the costume of the Goddess of Liberty. It prompted glowing reviews from the local press. By the time the theater reopened, the state legislature was meeting in a special session and the city was filled with soldiers and what Jacob Piatt Dunn called “enthusiastic townsmen.” Many of them crowded into the Metropolitan, where patriotic emotions were at fever pitch night after night. Notes Dunn: “After that spring there was never any hostile criticism of the theater, as an institution, in the Indianapolis newspapers.” 17 On January 1, 1862, the Met, as it frequently was called, launched the new year with what it promoted as the “great drama” of The Southern Rebellion, starring Vincent and McCarthy. The theater advertisements said it would appear at the theater until further notice. It lasted just four days. However, the theater remained busy with other bookings. The first nationally recognized actor to play the Met was John Wilkes Booth. He opened a six-day engagement on Christmas Day, 1861. He was highly regarded at the time, appearing in six leading roles in a Shakespearian lineup that included Macbeth, Hamlet, and Richard III. He was referred to in those days as the “celebrated tragedian ” and the “great Booth.” He returned for one week in November 1862 and five weeks later in January 1863. The last visit came fifteen months before he would assassinate Abraham Lincoln at the Ford Theater. For six years (1862–68) the Metropolitan offered the growing city of Indianapolis some of the best theater talent available. Frequently the productions were selections from Shakespeare. Besides Booth, there were appearances by John Neafie, Daniel Bandmann, and Lawrence Barrett. Women, who were limited when it came to proIronically , Laura Keene’s Combination Troupe was scheduled to move into the Metropolitan for two weeks (late October and early November 1864). Train problems delayed the arrival and limited the engagement to ten days. Three of those days the troupe presented the comedy Our American Cousin, the same play they were presenting six months later at the Ford with the U.S. President in the audience. Keene’s career never quite recovered, although she and her players were never implicated in what happened. fessional careers, were finding success in the new world of American theater. Emma Waller, Miss Lotta, Fanny Price, and Emily Melville all had leading roles at the Metropolitan, but they have left little imprint all these years later. A key booking during this first decade at the Metropolitan was a musicalmelodrama titled Black Crook, which The Oxford Companion to American Theatre describes as “the most successful Broadway play up to its time and the first to run for over a year.” The production had opened in New York City in September 1866 and was on the road appearing in Indianapolis a year later. Metropolitan advertisements declared that it would appear “every evening until further notice.” The engagement ran for an unprecedented fifteen days. What was the appeal of this show, which would net over $1 million? It had a fairyland theme and what Daniel Blum’s Pictorial History of American Theatre called “never-before-seen production effects.” It also featured, in the words of the Oxford Companion, “a long line of choryphees (chorus girls) in what were euphemistically called pink tights but were actually flesh colored.” Despite...