Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 123, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1911 — BIG AUDIENCE APPRECIATED PRODUCTION OF “ESMERALDA”. [ARTICLE]

BIG AUDIENCE APPRECIATED PRODUCTION OF “ESMERALDA”.

Graduates Make Fine Impression as Thespians and Various Performers Are Applauded., A Targe audience, largely composed of the parents of the graduates, their relatives and friends of the high school (Scholars, witnessed a cast selected from the graduating class present "Esmeralda” at the Ellis theatre Tuesday evening, and enjoyed the production thoroughly. The play was the heaviest thing Uver undertaken by high school students here and gave a splendid opportunity for the delineation of various characters and the young people made good at it in every way. The play took its name from Esmeralda Rogers, whose parents resided on a poor North Carolina farm. Miss Ruth Harper was Esmeralda and her parents were Elton Clarke and Wilma Peyton. Near the Rogers farm lived Dave Hardy, a poor but honest and confiding southern farmer. He loved Esmeralda and she reciprocated. Jim Ellis was Dave. They were just about to secure the mother’s consent to their marriage when the discovery of a vein of iron ore on the Rogers* farm by a speculator turned Mrs. Roger’s head and she decided to secure a ° title for her daughter and dragged the hen-pecked husband and their daughter to Paris, where she is about to marry her to an imposter “Marquis” when Dave appears on the scene and through American friends in Paris, notably a Mr. Estabrook, played by Clarence Smith and Jack Desmond, played by Donald Beam, he is able to learn that Esmeralda is still true to him. Two young artists, Nora and Kate Desmond, played by Bernice Hammond and Rosabell Daugherty, aided in the plot to restore Esmeralda to Dave, and all encounter a regular Tartar in the ambitious Mrs. Rogers, who defies them. It transpires “in a letter which” Mr. Estabrook had a hard time to read that the vein of IFon did not pan out on the Rogers land but that it did on the Hardy farm and poor, honest Dave is made a millionaire by the find. He uses his money for some time in allowing Mrs Rogers to give Esmeralda a chance to marry a title. Like all other stories all is well that ends well and the end

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came with the hen-pecked husband asserting himself after twenty-five years of submission, much to the horror of his domineering wife. Dave comes into his own by getting Esmeralda back and the precise and loyal Mr. Estabrook has a real love scene with Nora and won’t take no for an answer. The curtain falls with all the performers but the banished “Marquis,” Chas. Britt, on the stage, and all are happy but the ambitious Mrs. Rogers, who was crushed by the uprising against her. No home talent performance has given better satisfaction and the actors were showered with compliments.