In 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, famed American poet and writer Archibald MacLeish penned “Panic,” a play in verse about the fall of McGafferty, the world’s richest man. Despite its limited run at New York City’s Phoenix Theater, the show starred then-19-year-old Orson Welles in the lead and featured choreography by Martha Graham. After the show’s run ended, “Panic” was mostly forgotten and MacLeish (and Welles) became noted for other works.
Notably, MacLeish, who lived in Conway during his later years, was named the 9th Librarian of Congress in 1944 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in honor of his work.
The play’s obscurity ended in July 1980 when it was resurrected by the ABIA theater company whose director, Marilyn Tobin, had already proven her expertise for large-scale performances the year before with “Mother Courage” on the sprawling Clown Mountain Farm above Greenfield. For “Panic,” Tobin arranged to stage the play right in Bank Row, directly in front of the First National Bank and Trust Building, aptly constructed in 1929.
The production was the talk of Franklin County during the summer of 1980 and was lauded by one of the town’s attorneys as “The biggest thing to happen in Greenfield since the town bicentennial in 1953.” Big, it was indeed, as over a hundred residents from across the county including business owners, lawyers, and civic leaders volunteered to sing, act, or lend their technical services to create and maintain the huge infrastructure of sound, lighting and stage construction. Tobin enlisted the support of Tony Award-nominated and Obie Award-winner composer Elizabeth Swados to write the score that was ably handled by musical director, Ray Vakel.
The show ran for several weekends in July 1980 and was attended by nearly 1,000 people including Conway residents Archibald MacLeish and his wife, both of whom were given seats of honor. With its antique cars, torchlight-bearing crowds of street people and musical 1930s numbers sung by individuals and group choruses, the ambitious production made up for the at times meandering plot.
There were moments of humor as well — some unintentional. During one of the evening performances, a gentleman, obviously with three sheets to the wind, staggered out of nearby Ray’s Café and undoubtedly thought he had traveled back in time. He made a hurried exit stage right as the crowd cheered his cameo performance.
Spurred by her success with “Panic,” the following year Tobin wrote and directed “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” about the 1704 Raid on Deerfield. The audience chose to see the play staged either from the English settler perspective or from the Native American viewpoint. As such, it was two plays performed simultaneously. Both sections reunited for the climatic attack scene.
Tobin had planned to follow this extravaganza with an even more ambitious project for 1982, a dramatization of the plight of the Vietnamese Boat People with a flotilla cruising down the Connecticut River. Sadly, the production never came to pass and the ABIA theater company ceased to exist after three years of enlivening the cultural landscape of Franklin County.
Daniel Brown, who lived in Franklin County from 1970-2014 and now resides in Taos, New Mexico, was the the production photographer for the 1980 performance of “Panic.”