The Poor of New York by Dion Boucicault

PAC is calling our 25/26 Season the American Season, because all of the plays we're presenting focus on distinctly American themes.

BUT WAIT! Did you know that The Poor of New York was actually written by an Irishman? 

Read on and be illuminated!

The Poor of New York (also known as The Streets of New York) premiered in December of 1857 at the Wallack Lyceum Theatre in New York City. Its author, Dionysis "Dion" Boucicault, was an Irish actor, theatre manager, and absurdly prolific playwright famed for his melodramas.

Just look at his fancy little hat!

Dion was ostensibly the son of a Huguenot wine merchant and an Irish woman 26 years his junior, but it's much more likely that his actual father was a younger Irish man named Dionysus Lardner, a scientist and lecturer. Dion was forced to apprentice briefly under Lardner as a civil engineer, but he hated the work and quickly abandoned his apprenticeship to seek out a life in the theatre. 

He also had a wealthy first wife who died in a mysterious mountaineering accident in the Swiss Alps, but that's a rabbit hole for another day. 

Boucicault began his theatre career as an actor in the provinces of England, where he performed as part of a professional acting company. His early plays received a fairly lukewarm response from audiences, but in 1841, he wrote his first hit London Assurance, and was soon cranking out dozens of plays every year. Between the years of 1836 and 1890, Boucicault wrote over 130 plays (!!) and had many of them produced to great acclaim in both London and New York. His anti-slavery play The Octaroon was extremely popular, and his performance in his play The Shaughraun won him the reputation of the best "stage Irishman" of the era. Indeed, in addition to his extensive work as a playwright, Boucicault often appeared on stage in his own work - often as loveable low-status peasant characters.

Dion as the Conn in "The Shaughraun" in 1874

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Dion Boucicault in character, taken between 1860-1865. Photograph: Mathew Brady/Harvard Theatre Collection

Although some critics thought that Boucicault cranking out broad crowd-pleasers was below his literary ability, Boucicault himself once commented wryly that, "I can spin out these rough-and-tumble dramas as a hen lays eggs. It's a degrading occupation, but more money has been made out of guano than out of poetry."

The Poor of New York (also called The Streets of New York) was adapted from a French play called Les Pauvres de Paris by one Edouard Brisemarre. Boucicault simplified the plot, adjusted the dates to coincide with the New York financial crises, and punched up the characters and emotional conflicts to draw from more American social morays. He also established the quippy, fast-paced dialogue and sharp sense of humor that would become a hallmark of the genre.

The first production of the play also featured a massive spectacle piece in Act V in which the whole set was literally set ablaze and a real life fire engine came on stage to quench it. This was the first of what came to be known as "sensation scenes," which became a staple of 19th and 20th century melodrama. 

The trick involved a metal set covered in highly flammable fabric and soaked in naphtha, which would burn fast and bright. Part of the set was rigged to collapse, and behind it all was a drop painted to look like flames, which cycled continually upwards. Boucicault explained the method in an 1890 editions of The Scientific American. I have yet to read the details, but I can only imagine it would have given OSHA a heart attack. 

The play went over so well in New York that Boucicault later brought it to England and revamped it as The Poor of Liverpool. He would repeat this recipe for success four more times, with The Poor of Leeds, The Poor of Manchester, The Streets of Islington and The Poor of London.