A Message from Mars (play)

A Message from Mars is a play by Richard Ganthony, first performed at London's Avenue Theatre in November 1899.

Horace refuses to escort Minnie, his ward and fiancee, to a ball because he would prefer to spend his evening at home reading about new discoveries about the planet Mars.

Ganthony said that the emphasis on playbuilding came from his acting experiences (in plays like The Cat and the Cherub)[1] and helped shape the elements that were used in A Message from Mars.

[4] To combat this, Ganthony sold his manuscript outright, for £400 (equivalent to £54,255 in 2023),[5] to British comedic actor Charles Hawtrey.

[6] In 1903, Gathony publicly challenged allegations published in The Daily Express that the play's success was entirely due to the revisions Charles and George Hawtrey had made to Ganthony's original script.