FOREWORD
With the production of “The Detour,” about a year ago, I managed to secure some measure of success in drawing a simple picture of life as it is lived on a Long Island farm; encouraged by this, I am now turning toward my own people, the people of northern New England, whose folklore, up to the present time, has been quite neglected in our theatre. I mean, of course, that few serious attempts have been made in the direction of a genre comedy of this locality. Here I have at least tried to draw a true picture of these people, and I am of their blood, born of generations of Northern Maine, small-town folk, and brought up among them. In my memory of them is little of the “Rube” caricature of the conventional theatre; they are neither buffoons nor sentimentalists, and at least neither their faults nor their virtues are borrowed from the melting pot but are the direct result of their own heritage and environment.
Owen Davis.
1923.
ICEBOUND
“Icebound” was originally produced in New York, February 10, 1923, with the following cast:
| Henry Jordan | John Westley |
| Emma, his wife | Lotta Linthicum |
| Nettie, her daughter by a former marriage | Boots Wooster |
| Sadie Fellows, once Sadie Jordan, a widow | Eva Condon |
| Orin, her son | Andrew J. Lawlor, Jr. |
| Ella Jordan, the unmarried sister | Frances Neilson |
| Doctor Curtis | Lawrence Eddinger |
| Jane Crosby, a second cousin of the Jordans | Phyllis Povah |
| Judge Bradford | Willard Robertson |
| Ben Jordan | Robert Ames |
| Hannah | Edna May Oliver |
| Jim Jay | Charles Henderson |
ACT ONE.
The Parlor of the Jordan Homestead, 4 P.M., October, 1922.
ACT TWO.
The Sitting Room of the Jordan Homestead, Two months later. Afternoon.
ACT THREE.
Same as Act I, Late in the following March.