| Seventeen | |
|---|---|
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| Written by | Hugh Stanislaus Stange, Stannard Mears, and Stuart Walker |
| Based on | Seventeen by Booth Tarkington |
| Directed by | Stuart Walker |
| Date premiered | January 21, 1918 |
| Place premiered | Booth Theatre |
| Original language | English |
| Subject | Scenes of late adolescence |
| Genre | Comedy |
| Setting | The Baxter home and Parcher's front porch, in a small Indiana town. |
Seventeen is a 1917 play by writers Hugh Stanislaus Stange, Stannard Mears, and Stuart Walker, based on Booth Tarkington's 1916 novel. It is a four-act comedy with six scenes and two settings. The story concerns a seventeen-year-old boy in a small town who is smitten with a visiting beauty, enduring the pangs of a crush with the humiliation of not being accepted as adult by his family and friends.
The play was first produced and staged by Stuart Walker, with settings by Frank J. Zimmerer, and starring Gregory Kelly and Ruth Gordon. It had a tryout at Indianapolis in June 1917, followed by an opening tour starting September 1917. It premiered on Broadway during January 1918 and ran through August 1918 for over 250 performances.
The play had been preceded by a 1916 silent film version of Tarkington's novel. A musical version of the stage play was produced in 1926 as Hello, Lola, followed by a 1940 film adaptation. Another stage musical of the same name made in 1951, went back to the Tarkington novel for its storyline.