"The Frontier Theatre" offers some intriguing glimpses of performances by a traveling theatre troupe in the old west. The Harlow Players come to Wichita and we see lengthy segments from each of the three plays they perform at the town's Music Hall. The plays are: "Suffer Little Children," "Death to a King" (attributed to Christopher Marlowe), and "A Tale of Two Cities" (adapted from the Charles Dickens novel). The cowboys in the audience get drunk and take the melodramatic proceedings too seriously, physically assaulting poor Mr. Harlow (Mark Dana), who portrays the villain in the first two theatrical segments, forcing Marshal Earp to intervene. (Harlow has an easier time with the Dickens adaptation, in which he plays Sydney Carton.) Earlier, we'd seen Earp evict Jeff Pruitt (Glenn Strange), the manager of a "girlie" show, after the showgirls start rolling the drunken cowhands. Pruitt then plots his revenge. We don't get to see any of that show, risqué or not, although I'm sure they could have toned it down for television. Joan Freeman, future co-star of Elvis Presley, Don Knotts and the Three Stooges, plays Harlow's daughter Jeannie, who also acts in the plays.
Review of The Frontier Theatre
