Dream Girl is a 1945 two-act comedy by Elmer Rice, with a large cast, multiple sets, and quick pacing. It depicts a day in the life of a daydreaming bookstore manager, whose vivid fantasies form much of the play's action. The work makes great demands on the actress playing this part, as she is on stage constantly, must make costume and mood changes while jumping between sets, and delivers long soliloquies and a Shakespearean speech. According to some reviewers, her spoken lines were the longest female part known up to that time, nearly as long as Hamlet. The dream fantasies prompted comparison to the short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but critics at the time more often suggested the play Lady in the Dark as an influence.
Dream Girl was first produced by the Playwrights' Company, of which Rice was a member, with the author directing his then wife Betty Field in the starring role. The complex scenic and lighting designs were devised by Jo Mielziner, and the ladies' gowns by Mainbocher. The play predated the Tony Awards, but Betty Field won the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Performance by an Actress. The original Broadway run lasted for one year, though the production was on hiatus during the summer months. It was a critical and popular success, was nominated for the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play of 1946, and within a few months of opening had made back its original investment.
The original production spun off separate companies in London and Chicago during 1946, and a national tour. It had a brief Broadway revival in 1951, and has been since adapted for film and television.
Characters
For clarity, only principal "real" characters are listed; featured and dream scene characters are omitted.
Lead
Georgina Allerton called "Georgie", age 23, runs the Mermaid Bookshop and daydreams constantly. Supporting Lucy Allerton is the stoutish and sneezy mother to Georgie and Miriam, and wife to William. William Allerton is an attorney who specializes in pro bono cases; husband to Lucy. Miriam Allerton Lucas is Georgie's married and pregnant sister, disenchanted wife to Jim. Jim Lucas is a feckless publisher's reader, husband to Miriam and target of Georgie's dreams. Claire Blakely is Georgie's colleague at the Mermaid Bookshop, also 23 but more practical. Clark Redfield age 28, is a brash newspaper book reviewer who yearns to be a sports reporter. George Hand is an older married book jobber, who keeps asking Georgie to go out with him.
Synopsis
Georgie Allerton wakes one morning to hear on her bedside radio a promotion for a personal advice program. Ignoring her mother's calls to get moving, Georgie imagines herself on the radio program, clutching her bedside lamp like a microphone while she reveals her love for her brother-in-law to millions. Her fantasy punctured by her mother's intervention, Georgie joins her parents at the breakfast table. There she reveals that the Mermaid Bookshop has lost less money this month than ever before. Her father William announces he's going to Washington D.C. to plead before the Supreme Court for another impecunious client. Lucy, sneezing from a cold, despairs about both their businesses and that of her hapless son-in-law Jim, who reads manuscripts for thirty dollars a week. Jim had rejected a manuscript called Always Opal that later became a runaway hit. Georgie jumps to Jim's defense, since he has recommended her own manuscript to his publisher. Her sister Miriam comes in the kitchen and reveals she is pregnant and fed up with her husband. Georgie goes into another fantasy where she lies in a hospital delivery room with twin newborns, while the doctor and nurse (looking a lot like her parents) and Jim Lucas praise her courage.