The Wisdom of Eve at Cumberland Theatre

By Mary Orr

Adapted from the story by Mary Orr, on which the film All About Eve starring Betty The Wisdom of EveDavis is based. An engrossing and revealing “inside” story of life in New York’s theatre world, told in terms of an unscrupulous ingenue’s rise to Broadway stardom. When we first meet Eve Harrington, she is standing in the rain by the stage door of the theatre in which the renowned Margo Crane is starring in her latest long-run hit. Waiting for a glimpse of her professed idol, she accosts Karen Roberts, Margo’s good friend and the wife of the playwright, Lloyd Roberts, and inveigles an invitation to meet the great actress herself. The meeting leads to unexpected opportunity as Margo, struck with Eve’s “sincerity,” takes her on as a personal secretary. Before long Eve has done such a fine job of straightening out the clutter of Margo’s personal affairs that Margo, while she had always jealously resisted the engagement of an understudy for her own role, allows Eve to have the assignment. Then Eve begins to move ahead in earnest, her true character emerging as she lies, cheats and blackmails her way to Broadway stardom—and then a Hollywood career—leaving the wreckage of her friends’ trust behind her. As the play ends there are rumors that Eve has found a new “friend,” this time a movie tycoon, so it appears that perhaps we have not, for the moment, heard all there is to tell about Eve.