Carol Plays Summer Stock a/k/a Carol in Repertory - the Second Carol Page theater story

Reading this series is pure joy for me, as it brings back so many wonderful memories of performing in community theater.  The author, Helen Dore Boylston, properly captures the excitement, the hard work, the disappointments, the backstage drama, the camaraderie, the hopes and dreams, the last minute mishaps, and everything else that goes into getting a play ready for that opening night!  And the continuing drama of what happens once the play begins - well, there's plenty of that, as well!  Boylston even offers up a word of thanks in an Author's Note at the beginning of the book - acknowledging how much she "looked to Jane Cobb for her lively suggestions and her true ear for dialogue.  In this new story of Carol she has cheerfully assumed the role of collaborator and godmother, and in gratitude I should like to dedicate the story to her." According to a tribute to Cobb in the New York Times (Jane Cobb - Author), she was a writer, too, having stories published in numerous magazines and a silent co-author of the Sue Barton books.  Thus, it is nice to see Boylston acknowledge her part in the creation of this series.

 

Carol Plays Summer Stock (a/k/a Carol in Repertory) picks up shortly after the conclusion of the first book.  For those who do not recall, at the end of the last book, Carol and her friends, Julia Gregg, Mike Horodinsky, Keith Macdonald, and Nan Walton were all selected to spend the summer at the Richards Village Theater in Winasser, Maine - Mike as a stage manager, Julia, Keith, and Nan as apprentices, and Carol in her first paying job as second ingenue!  The book opens as they arrive at the small town theater, full of hope, dreams, and excitement about the summer that lies ahead of them - and little do they know just how much drama they are going to experience - both on stage and behind the scenes!  Boylston ups the ante for this story, as her characters now have a bit of experience under their belts, so she puts them through some true challenges that test not only their dedication to the theater, but also their loyalty to one another.

 

With this book, readers are introduced to a small batch of new characters - Pete Gregory, Remember Hingham, and Orchid Wynton - two of whom become fast friends with the group, and one of whom defines the epitome of acting, both on and off the stage!  Pete, Julia, and Nan are relegated to classes and backstage work, while Mike becomes the assistant to the theater's own stage manager, Bill Dolan.  Carol is given a script for her first play, at which time she learns that Jane Sefton - the actress who gave Carol a ride in her car in the first book - is going to be performing at the theater that summer, and she has high hopes that she will have the opportunity to share the stage with her.  And it seems like she may get her chance, until a very sly Orchid Wynton decides she wants the role, and she tricks her way into it!  Yes, the story features an ongoing feud (of sorts) between Orchid and Carol, as Orchid is determine to keep her "star" status at the theater, even if that means making Carol look bad on stage.  But once Carol figures out what the other girl is up to, she manages to circumvent the mishaps and, once again, save the theater in the most imaginative way.

 

While I suspected in the first book that Carol and Mike were destined to get together - after all, it's the oldest trope in the world to have the two people who can't stand each other at the start end up together in the end! - this book seems to further the idea that while Carol and Mike have mutual respect for one another, their relationship is nothing more than friends in the theater.  That is not to say their friendship is not tested, as Boylston uses Orchid to come between the two in some rather devious ways, but despite her flaws, the one thing that can be said about Carol Page is that she is loyal to those she cares about - and it is her loyalty to Mike that helps save him from destroying his future by the end of the book.

 

There was an interesting comment in the book, when Mike gets irritated and makes the comment, "What's the Wonder Girl going to do now - imitations?" (p. 132).  As a long-time fan of the Wonder Woman comics from DC Comics, I was curious as to the name.  It seems this reference, published in 1942, actually predates the first appearance of Wonder Girl in DC Comics, who did not make her first appearance as a teen-age Wonder Woman until 1947!  However, the character of Wonder Woman had made her first appearance in All-Star Comics issue 8, published in 1941, just one year before this book was published, thus leaving one to wonder if the "Wonder Girl" reference was a simple play on words from the Wonder Woman character.

 

 Something that did surprise me in the book is a reference to divorce.  Remember (the character) admits to Carol that her father and mother were divorced, and that her father has re-married three times since then, and her mother twice (p. 155)!  While divorce was not necessarily uncommon by the 1940s, it was still unusual to see if mentioned in a young adult novel - and to think that the divorced man and women remarried multiple times after that, why, it is shocking!  According to a study by Bowling Green State University, in 1940 "approximately 3% of ever-married women in all education groups were separated or divorced"; however, the '40s basically started the increase in divorce rate, which grow higher and higher with each passing decade.  Now, it is fairly common to read about divorces; but in the early 1940s, it was a completely different story.  As such, I'm surprised not only that Boylston chose to give her character such a background, but that the publisher (Little Brown & Company) allowed it to be published.

 

As with the first book in this series, the plays referenced in the story are actual plays - from Dear Brutus, by J.M. Barrie (p. 21) to The Red Coat, by John Patrick Shanley (p. 33) to the musical Camille (p. 190) and even Seagulls Crying (p. 190), which is probably a take on Chekhov's 1895 play, The Seagull - while others are fictional in nature, such as The Upper Brackets (p, 68) and The Merry Woods of Windsor (p. 89), which is likely a take on the real play, Merry Wives of Windsor, as well as Run for Your Money (p 190), which, interestingly enough, was the name of a film in 1949.  Likewise, the location of this small town theater, Winasset, Maine, is fictional, but bears a close resemblance to the town of Wiscasset, Maine (although I could not find any community theaters in Wiscasset back in the 1940s when this book was written and published).

 

The artist on the internal illustrations changed - while the first book featured illustrations by Frederick E. Wallace, this book features internals by Major Felton.  From what I could learn online, Felton provided book illustrations and painted posters in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, and his biography page on Wikipedia ( Major Felton - Artist) even acknowledges his work on the Carol page and Sue Barton series!  And like the first book, the British edition published two years after the first American edition, changed the title, this time more drastically to Carol in Repertory.  The British edition does feature the same internal illustrations, but the cover art is merely the same painted headshot that appeared on the cover of the first book.

 

This second book confirms my love of the series and the characters, and as indicated in the final chapter of this book, Carol and Mike are off to Broadway to see if they can make a name for themselves!

 

RATING:  10 carefully carried cups of tea out of 10 for another fun romp in the world of theater and acting with some very real, very flawed, and very enjoyable characters!