Post Road is a two-act, four-scene play written by Wilbur Daniel Steele and Norma Mitchell, and staged by H. C. Potter.
The action occurs in the living room of Emily Madison's rambling ancestral home on the Boston Post Road in Connecticut during October 1934.
[2] Its success depended heavily on the comedy of the character George Preble, played by Percy Kilbride in the original production.
Lead Supporting Featured Walk-On Emily Madison provides accommodations for tourists in her rambling old ancestral home on the Boston Post Road in Connecticut.
A limousine pulls up to the house, and Dr. Spender enters seeking a room for his patient, a young woman who has been taken ill while travelling.
Emily, holding a baby doll that Nurse Martin used to calm the infant, suddenly realizes the noise it makes is the same that they have been hearing the past week.
George, tuning in another police radio call, hears the body of a young woman who was beaten to death has been found on the Post Road.
The former, a marital farce on divorce, was given a week-long tryout at the Castle Theatre on the Boardwalk at Long Beach, New York during August 1934,[4] but doesn't appear to have subsequently been produced for Broadway.
During late October 1934, H. C. Potter and George Haight announced that Post Road would be their first production of the season, and that casting was in progress.
[7] Further members of the cast were identified on November 14, 1934, as Edward Fielding, Percy Kilbride, Romaine Callender, Edna Holland, Henry Norell, Wendy Atkin, Virginia Tracy, and Caroline Newcombe.
[8] Potter and Haight were evidently confident about their production, for the play premiered at the Theatre Masque on December 4, 1934, without previews or tryouts.
[7] Arthur Pollock in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle thought Post Road "an efficient play, funny and thrilling", with Percy Kilbride the source of most laughs.
[17] Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times identified the authors as the source of his unease with the play: "'Post Road' has given Mr. and Mrs. Steele considerable trouble, which they ungenerously pass on to the audience.