A Bunch of Keys

This is one of the plays that I was unable to find out anything directly listing Maude Adams as a player. I am including some information I found on the play in general, however.

=====American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle by Gerald Bordman; Oxford US, 1992=====

Hoyt's contributions in propelling the genre from infancy into adolescence would become obvious only with time and most certainly were not obvious when Willie Edouin's Sparks romped in his earliest effort, A Bunch of Keys ( 3-26-83, San Francisco Opera House [ N.Y.]). Hoyt's story revolved around a musical-comedy will in which a deceased uncle leaves a backwater hotel to one of his nieces. To which one? The dead man's unscrupulous lawyer, Snaggs (Edouin), reads from the will: "The first drummer who is a total stranger, that shall arrive at the hotel, shall be requested to decide which of my three nieces, otherwise the Bunch of Keys, Rose, May, and Theodosia Keys, is the homeliest. And to her I bequeath my entire estate." The girls do not consider a run-down hotel worth the humiliation; but their sweethearts go to all lengths to win the prize. In the end a codicil, which Snaggs has withheld, allows for a happy ending. The show was filled with roughhouse horseplay (a frog down a character's back) and dubious humor on the order of:

. . the ceiling fell down completely, mashing me . . . my mouth is full of hair and mortar. -- Very mortifying.

Young James T. Powers had a field day as a hurriedly enlisted bellhop forced to run up and down the stairs at breakneck speed to tend to the hotel's clients. However gauche and inane the play seems when read today, it delighted contemporaries, playing prosperously until late June.

=====A History of the Theatre in America from Its Beginnings to the Present Time Vol. 2 by Arthur Hornblow; J.B. Lippincott Company, 1919=====

Our modern stage has produced several dramatists with a marked gift for interpreting the humor in homely American types, notably Charles H. Hoyt, Edward Harrigan, George Ade and George M. Cohan--master craftsmen who may be said to bear the same relation to the theatre as Mark Twain does to our literature. Charles Hale Hoyt ( 1860-1900) was born in Concord, N. H., and began his career in the cattle business in Colorado. Later, he took up newspaper work and began writing plays. His first piece, "A Bunch of Keys," written in 1883, was favorably received, and a later piece, "A Rag Baby," produced the following year, was also a success. His best-known play, "A Trip to Chinatown," enjoyed a long run at the Madison Square Theatre in 1890. Other pieces, "A Texas Steer," "A Temperance Town," "A Milk White Flag," "A Parlor Match," clever satires on contemporary events, were enormously popular and placed Hoyt in the foremost rank of successful dramatists of his day.

=====The Theatre Handbook: And Digest of Plays Book by George Freedley, Bernard Sobel; Crown Publishers, 1940 =====

Hoyt, Charles Hale (1860-1900). American dramatist. Born in Concord, New Hampshire, went into cattle business in Colorado; became a newspaper man, then started to write plays. His satires on contemporary events made him one of the most successful writers of his day. Typescripts of most of his plays exist in the New York Public Library. His plays include: A Bunch of Keys; A Parlor Match; A Rag Baby; A Tin Soldier; A Hole in the Ground; A Brass Monkey; A Midnight Bell; A Texas Steer; or, Money Makes the Mare Go; A Trip to Chinatown; A Milk White Flag; A Temperance Town; A Contented Woman; A Black Sheep; A Stranger in New York; A Day and a Night; a Dog in a Manger; A Runaway Colt.