Poor Harold

Floyd Dell may have written Poor Harold in 1920, but in many ways its humor rings just as true today as it did then. What is even more notable about the play is the fact that it features mostly females in comedic lead roles, a relative rarity in 1920. The ten-minute comedy finds Harold, the bumbling poet, having been exiled from his native Evanston, Illinois, after a scandal which he swears is all a result of a misunderstanding. As it turns out, he’s not quite the victim he makes himself out to be. Worlds suddenly collide in the oddest of ways in this short play about the foibles of double lives and the dangers of getting involved with a man-about-town poet.