The story concerns a seaside boarding house owned by an old salt but run by his young daughter, and their guests: a Canadian artist and a New York married couple.

It ran for only three weeks on Broadway then was withdrawn by the producers in favor of Golden Days, another Helen Hayes-led production.

Roddy protests his sincerity, but is nonplussed when Frazee tells him Clara makes a habit of these liaisons with bohemian types.

(Curtain) After back-to-back hits in Clarence and Bab, twenty-year-old Helen Hayes wanted to play something other than a flapper.

He used the area for the setting of The Wren, and characters with the local accent, about which he gave very specific instructions on pronouciation and diction in the published play.

[5] The critic for the local paper made much of the "wistful" quality of Hayes' acting, and also that she seemed a little nervous with the scene in which her character realizes Roddy's insincerity.

[6] The performance on Thursday, October 6, 1921 was cancelled due to Leslie Howard's brief illness, as the regular understudy wasn't up on dialogue changes recently made by Tarkington.

[9] The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reviewer, hoping for another Clarence, spoke of disappointment at The Wren: "The saving grace of the whole performance was the excellent acting of the company.

[10] The critic for The Brooklyn Daily Times tried to put a better face on it: "...the author has more than made up for a lack of theme and continuity by his very deft drawings of character and the whimsical rightness of the dialect".

[11] James Whittaker in the New York Daily News was vitrolic in his condemnation of The Wren, saying "the curse of the footlights is on the pen of Booth Tarkington" and "he has finally succeeded in turning a good writer into a bad playwright".

[13] Percy Hammond in The New York Tribune felt that The Wren fell between Tarkington's best (Clarence) and his worst (The Country Cousin and Mister Antonio).

[14] Alexander Woollcott in The New York Times called The Wren "charming" and used both "winsome" and "wistful" in describing Helen Hayes.

But though he defended the play as "deftly and simply fashioned, artfully written" he also acknowledged it as "curiously short-weight", leaving the theatre-goer feeling "undernourished".

[15] The play was announced as being withdrawn by the producers in favor of a new work at the Gaiety Theatre, Golden Days, which would also star Helen Hayes.