Junior Senator sent me down a familiar path last night after finishing it, one that is annoyingly common with many of these older (but not old enough!) plays: overall I think this is a good play trapped inside of an ok one, but there’s no safe and legal way to either revise it or actually produce it.

While the play just celebrated its 50th birthday, meaning that the writer Patrick Clepper may still walk this Earth, he was no online presence, and company who published my copy (the Dramatic Publishing Company) does not list Junior Senator among its titles to license.

Unfortunately for me I’m not an expert in contract law, but I would guess the following happened: PM Clepper wrote this play and licensed it to DPC for a set period (probably 25 years) after which they chose not to renew it because it wasn’t popular, meaning the rights reverted back to Clepper (or his estate), meaning that if I wanted to do it I would need to find his estate (which may or may not exist,) and make arrangements with them.

While I could likely put the show up without fear of repercussion, the cost if I’m wrong is quite high and as the copyright page tells me "it is dishonest and illegal to do a royalty work without paying the author”.

Why did I go through all this with you? Partially to ground how much I do think about these older plays, and partly to demonstrate how disposable a lot of our theatrical culture is. Many of the plays I’ve found are interesting, but illegal to do anything with, which is a bummer.

It’s also because I want this play to be better than it is, and I think it could be: Junior Senator is a light American comedy where the governor has gotten himself into a mighty pickle… kinda.

From the back of the play “A United States Senator unexpectedly resigns, and the governor wants the job himself… the stunt naming of his own young daughter to the Senate… however young people go for the idea of a young person in the office, and Women’s Liberationists like the idea of a female lawmaker. Unfortunately, the Governor fits neither category!”

I took out a lot of text, but perhaps you, like I, filled in some blanks, and thought he starts the show pondering this issue, names his daughter, she’s unexpectedly popular, and he works the rest of the show to prove that he’s still valuable so he can get elected himself. That is not the case.

Strictly speaking everything does happen, but in an 88-page play he doesn’t learn the senate position is open until page 30, doesn’t name his daughter until page 65, and she doesn’t become popular until page 87! While the play is filled with events, with us learning about the situation, with us meeting characters, etc. nothing really happens until the second act, and even then the Governor (whose name is never given) hardly makes any active decisions in the play!

That’s not to say it isn’t interesting, but if we’re given a clear ambition for the governor: he wants to run for senate once his term is up, and a clear problem: he has to nominate someone right now, that his clever “solution” would create more problems for him that would be staged instead of leaving the story spiraling into the future.

The play is reasonably funny for one of its age and theme, and even if the women’s lib jokes go on a bit long, I never felt as though the women were the butt of the joke so it doesn’t suffer from as many outdated modes of thinking as one might presume, but it is a little overstuffed with characters, and understuffed with decisions or consequences regrettably.