NEW VERSION OF "TURANDOT"

"A Thousand Years Ago," by Percy MacKaye '97, author of the "Scarecrow" and "Tomorrow," will be given its first-night production at the Shubert Theatre this evening. The play is a poetic romance the basic legend of which has been treated before by Gozzi, the Italian dramatist, and by Schiller. Last year, as produced by Reinhardt with his new scenery, the Gozzi-Schiller version, which is called "Turandot," had a great vogue in Germany. But when brought to this country and tried out on the American public it failed. It was then suggested that Mr. MacKaye was the right person to re-write the play. He refused to revise the old version but set to work to supplement the legend with a romantic plot of his own. This is the version now being presented under the title of "A Thousand Years Ago," which name was adopted after "Turandot" and "The Princess of Pekin" were considered and discarded. The scenery is of the original Reinhardt type.