Shakespeare in Central City

In the last quarter of the 19th Century, Central City, Colo, (pop.; 572) perched on the edge of a Rocky Mountain canyon 50 miles west of Denver, was a booming mine town. Bernhardt, Modjeska, Booth and Jefferson played on the stage of its massive Opera House.

Three years ago, heirs of the McFarlane brothers, who built the Opera House, presented it to Denver University. Ann Evans, Denver's Art patron, organized a scheme to make annual revivals there a reminder of the city's rowdy past. The revivals started two years ago when Lillian Gish played Camille. Last summer an audience in 1890 costume watched The Merry Widow. For last week's performance Scene Designer Robert Edmond Jones selected Othello, persuaded Walter Huston to take a six-week vacation from Dodsworth in Manhattan to appear as the Moor with Nan Sunderland (Mrs. Huston) as Desdemona.

If the fac,ade of Central City's Opera House and its 750 hickory seats were redolent of the past, there was nothing antique last week about what happened on the stage. Walter Huston made Othello a modern hero, lively, admirable and forlorn. Nan Sunderland's Desdemona was a graceful and impulsive lady, much more exciting than the demure Desdemonas who were in vogue when Central City last saw Othello. Kenneth MacKenna, whose brother. Scene Designer Jo Mielziner, was in the audience, made lago a villain of monstrous subtlety and venom. The Jones' sets, sparkling with Venetian color, were amazingly well handled throughout a one-intermission performance on a stage equipped only with a hand curtain. An audience of 750 which included Cinemagnate Jesse Lasky, Producer Max Gordon. Mr. & Mrs. Alan Campbell (Dorothy Parker), cheered itself hoarse after the performance and then adjourned, like most of the cast, to the barroom of the Teller House next door, to which President Grant once made his way over a pavement of silver bricks.

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