1895 Actor E. H. Sothern scores a personal triumph in the adventure melodrama The Prisoner of Zenda.
1922 Bringing the early 20s fad of musicals about plucky heroines like Sally, Irene, and Mary, to its climax, J. Fred Coots, Eddie Dowling, Cyrus Wood, and Raymond Klages put them all together in a show called Sally, Irene and Mary which is yet another hit, and runs 313 performances.
1956 Towards Zero, an Agatha Christie mystery, opens in London. It runs for six months.
1972 Noël Coward’s Relative Values is revived in London at the Westminster Theatre. Margaret Lockwood stars .
1984 Las Vegas meets Off-Broadway as Johnny Seaton performs Elvis Mania at the Off On Broadway Theater. Leslie Irons directs the solo work which includes Elvis Presley numbers from over three decades. Seaton as Presley leaves the building on September 16, following 18 performances.
1999 Ending its one-week extension, the Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann's musical satire, Urinetown concludes the New York International Fringe Festival—one week after all other shows had closed. The little musical that could about a Gotham-esque city where the privilege to relieve oneself is regulated by a single corporation, goes on to play an Off-Broadway run, followed by a Broadway run at Henry Miller's Theatre.
2003 Nathan Lane plays blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo in the solo drama Trumbo, opening Off-Broadway at the Westside Theatre. In the months to come, numerous other stage and film stars take the role for short engagements, including F. Murray Abraham, Brian Dennehy, Gore Vidal, Richard Dreyfuss, and Roger Rees.
2016 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Simon Stephens’ drama that won the 2015 Tony Award as Best Play, ends its 800-performance Broadway run at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Also closing today: the second Broadway revival of Les Misérables, and the return engagement of David Javerbaum's An Act of God, starring Sean Hayes.
More of Today's Birthdays: Paul Osborn (1901–1998). Richard Wright (1908–1960). Dick York (1928–1992). Judith Ivey (b. 1951). James Monroe Iglehart (b. 1974).
