The son of British Naval Commander Miles Keith Loweth and a Chinese milliner's daughter— magnate, adventurer, scientist, wordsmith—Dr. Althos Jepthal Low's unofficial biographer, Sir Nelson Cardiff, attributes his extraordinary life span to experimental herbal treatments his mother received at Shanghai's May-In Chu Institute in 1874.
Whatever the catalyst, Dr. Low's age is speculated to be nearing an unprecedented 129 years... if he is, in fact, as many believe, still alive. This is but one of the legends that swirl about this singular, reclusive figure; last seen publicly on film, alongside publisher William Randolph Hearst, during a Kenyan safari, summer of 1936.
The student of Dr. Low's phenomenal career, his feats of acumen in the development of worldwide financial markets, and his acquisition of the world's largest private fortune, need look no further than Cardiff's Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning, three-volume chronicle,
Sundered Heart: The Centuries of Shanghai Low—details of which remain too formidable in number to relate at this time.
Our focus, for the purpose of this introduction, however, centers on what has come to be called the Boy's Own Play Debate:
Scholars—Cardiff among them—have explored, at length, Dr. Low's lifelong fondness for tales from the Victorian popular culture of his youth, as well as his efforts to propagate the legacy of such authors as Kipling, Alcott, Doyle, Wells, Haggard and Orczy.
Few also question his love of the theatre and its history, citing his oftentimes-Byzantine efforts to attend thousands of performances worldwide, without being seen or recognized.
What is furiously debated is the assertion by American theatre actor/director Steve Pickering that, sometime during the summer of 2000, he was summoned and met by Dr. Low, himself, in the steam room of the West Side YMCA, Manhattan, and was, at that time, given a mandate by the reclusive billionaire, along with a key to a small storage locker located at the New York Port Authority's bus terminal.
Contained in the locker was a metal box filled with over forty manuscripts in various states of completion... theatrical adaptations of, for the most part, Victorian popular fiction.
Pickering claims the old man's mandate was simple: complete, edit and produce the scripts in as many public venues as possible, and in as theatrical a way imaginable. Never philanthropic, Dr. Low supposedly provided only the smallest of stipends to meet this goal, with the promise of more, should the venture prove successful.
Pickering asserts that he was chosen for this duty based on similar theatre work of his own that Dr. Low must have seen; a claim roundly hooted at in Chicago theatre circles.
Regardless, struck by the quality of the drafts, and being a lifelong aficionado of the genres himself, Pickering immediately enlisted the help of two longtime collaborators: critically acclaimed writer/ actor/director Kevin Theis, and nationally recognized computer graphics designer, Charlie Athanas.
The three, in turn, formed an umbrella not-for-profit Arts Organization in order to research and finish the work needed. And, in 2001, Shanghai Low Theatricals' first effort, The Sign of the Four, was produced by the Apple Tree Theatre in Highland Park, Illinois.
But, despite critical acceptance of the production itself, the opening set off a maelstrom of angry comments led by Sir Nelson—denouncing the trio's claim as to the identity of the primary adaptor. So much so, that British director Charley Sherman, formerly a writing partner of the others in the 1990s, was summoned back from sabbatical in England, in the hope that his participation would purchase some much-needed public credibility.
And so, shaken, but fortified and undeterred, it seems Shanghai Low Theatricals, for the present, will continue with their next adaptation, Sax RohmerÕs The Insidiou
