[Not all the plays on which a literary manager has to report are new or recent scripts. Part of my job at StageArts Theater Company, the Off-Off-Broadway showcase house where I worked for several months in 1984, was to help them start a script-soliciting program and a script-reading process.
[But the artistic directors, Nell Robinson, a stage director, and Ruth Ann Norris, an actress, also wanted me to advise them on ways of bringing, not audiences—they were actually doing okay in that regard—but reviewers and producers into the theater. In that capacity, I saw that I had to broaden their vision with respect to the kinds of plays StageArts was offering.
[Without going into detail, what I determined StageArts needed to do was go beyond the new plays they’d been producing and add a little variety. I tried to steer Nell and Ruth Ann toward some riskier material, and some older work that might not be being done so much in New York and might catch the attention of reviewers and grant-makers.
[What you see in this collection are some of the older plays, most written in the 19th century, I read and evaluated for SA, taking into consideration their tastes, but also what the small company could handle. Some of the plays in this group are ones that I selected for Nell and Ruth Ann because I thought they’d be eye-catching and weren’t often produced in New York; others were plays that one of the artistic directors, most often Nell Robinson, wanted me to evaluate for them.
[There will probably be another collection of classic script reports, and among them will be some plays I didn’t actually like, but Nell or Ruth Ann had an interest in them and wanted my take on them. In this batch, there’s a group that I knew was just out of the StageArts wheelhouse.]
--------------------
[Anna Cora Mowatt (née Ogden; 1819-70) was a French-born American author, playwright, and actress. She was clearly precocious, taking to writing at an early age. She was educated at a private school, but was mostly taught at home.
[In 1834, when she was 15, Mowatt eloped with an older man, James Mowatt, a New York lawyer. He encouraged her to continue her schooling and her writing, and in 1836, she published her first book, followed in 1837 by her second. She wrote magazine articles and her first play, a six-act drama called Gulzara, The Persian Slave, was intended to be played by an all-female cast (including the lone male character, a “breeches” role). Set in a Constantinople harem, the story was the abduction of the Turkish sultan’s son. It was subsequently published in a New York weekly newspaper.
[Mowatt’s most famous work, Fashion, or Life in New York, was published in 1845 and was an instant hit. It opened at the Park Theatre on Park Row in Lower Manhattan, on 24 March 1845 to rave reviews. It was produced in theaters all across the country. (This was in the days before New York City became the undisputed theater capital of the United States and plays and actors toured the nation, playing in theaters in all the cities in the states and territories.)
[In 1924, the play was revived by the renowned Provincetown Players in Greenwich Village. It eventually moved uptown to the current Theatre District and had a run of more than two hundred performances. In 1974, at the McAlpin Rooftop Theater on W. 34th Street in Manhattan, a chamber‐ensemble musical adaptation of Fashion was presented Off-Broadway. The adaptation was up-dated to 1973 and was played by a company of women—"with the exception of one male chauvinist . . . who . . . assumes the role of the faithless, irresistible and phony hero” (Clive Barnes’s New York Times review).]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
[ca] 6/20/84
[Rick]
Fashion, or Life in New York by Anna Cora Mowatt
(3 acts; 5 w, 8 m – 1 black, extras)
Plot Synopsis: Mr. Tiffany’s success as a merchant leads his wife to assume all the affectations of high society and to fill her home with would-be esthetes and presumed European nobility. Trueman, an honest upstate farmer, comes to visit his old friend and decries the changes that have taken place in the Tiffany home. With the aid of Gertrude, the family governess, he helps the Tiffanys shake off their sycophantic companions and return to a more simple life.
Theme: This satire on life in New York society pits Yankee honesty against European (and pseudo-European) phoniness. An amusing variety of characters functions in this capacity, and Count Jolimaitre, a French fop, provides a contrast to the plain Yankee heroes. Much of the plot concerns the exposure of the count.
Evaluation: This is an American classic from 1845, the days of melodrama. This is, in fact, a quintessential melodramatic farce, and is both very funny and charmingly warm. The style, language, and behavior are of the period, and are therefore not easily handled, but with care and delicacy on the part of the cast and director, it should make a delightful production.
Other Considerations: This play has been produced in New York in recent years, but not so recent that a new production would not attract attention. It is a classic, and belongs to the early period of American drama that is not frequently presented. Aside from its importance in theater history, the play is fun to do and see.
* *
* *
[Aleksandr Ostrovsky (1823-86) was a Russian playwright whose dramas are among the most widely read and frequently performed stage pieces in Russia.
[Ostrovsky started writing early, producing collections of scenes while he was still in his 20’s. His first publication was a short play, The Picture of a Family Happiness, in 1847. He continued to write plays, which were often praised when they appeared in periodicals—but were also banned from the stage for their critical outlook.
[Finally, his first play to be staged, Stay in Your Own Sled (1852), made it to the Maly Theater in Moscow in 1853. For the next 30 years, the Maly or the Aleksandrinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg would première his plays.
[In 1859, Ostrovsky wrote one of his best-known works, The Storm, which premièred at the Maly Theater in Moscow later that same year. It was also staged in Saint Petersburg and was warmly received in both cities, giving the playwright and the producing theaters big box-office hits. In 1863, Ostrovsky was awarded the prestigious Uvarov Prize for The Storm.
[The dramatist’s most popular play, Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man, premièred at the Aleksandrinsky on 1 November 1868. It opened at the Maly on 6 November and was a huge success at both theaters and has remained popular in Russia ever since, constantly revived and filmed. It is also Ostrovsky’s best-known comedy in the West.
[(The title of this play is translated in many different ways. Its Russian title is На всякого мудреца довольно простоты – Na vsyakogo mudretsa dovolno prostoty, which can also be translated as Even a Wise Man Stumbles or For Every Wise Man, Simplicity Is Enough.)
[Later Russian productions include a 1910 staging by Konstantin Stanislavsky at the world-famous Moscow Art Theater in which Stanislavsky appeared, along with Olga Knipper-Chekhova, the widow of famed playwright Anton Chekhov.
[In New York City, two Off-Broadway productions were mounted (as The Diary of a Scoundrel): 1989 by Roundabout Conservatory & Ensemble Company in Chelsea, and in 1956 by the Phoenix Theatre on the Upper East Side. The cast of the latter included Roddy McDowell, Robert Culp, Howard Da Silva, Peter Falk, Mike Kellin, Ruth McDevitt, Margaret Hamilton, Lorelei Lee, and Jerry Stiller.]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
[ca] 6/20/84
[Rick]
The Diary of a Scoundrel, or Enough Stupidity in Every Wise
Man by Alexandr Ostrovsky
(3 acts; 7 w, 8 m)
When his diary is stolen from him, the young detractor is faced suddenly with the horrible embarrassment of having his diary read aloud in the presence of the very people about whom he has written. He brazens it out, and with his own unique brand of clever rascality turns the whole thing to his advantage.
Theme: The play makes fun of the self-important minor functionaries of society—the stuffed shirts, the easily flattered, the ego-centric. In the end, even though they find Glumov out, they need him to keep the pretense of secrecy for their foibles. This play is very similar in many respects to The Inspector General [by Nikolai Gogol, 1842], though it lacks the heavy overtones of that play.
Evaluation: The play is hilariously funny and presents a wonderful farce in performance. Its pertinence is no less today than in 1868 when it was written, and no less applicable to the U.S. as it was to Imperial Russia. The characters are wonderfully eccentric, and make excellent acting roles.
Other Considerations: I don’t believe a production of Scoundrel
has been done in New York in recent memory.
If you are seriously considering older plays to alternate with new works,
this farce should be among them. It is a
classic in its own right, but a somewhat neglected one.
The large cast can certainly be cut some, and some characters can be combined to reduce the number of actors, should that be desirable. It would even be possible, and perhaps even theatrically advantageous, to up-date the play to the present. Only minor changes in the script would be necessary, and it may prove a striking comment on society.
* * * *
[Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), the French writer, playwright, poet, and essayist, is world-famous as the author of one play: Cyrano de Bergerac, first performed on 28 December 1897 in Paris, and has probably been on some stage somewhere in the world every day since then.
[In his short life—he was only 50 when he died of the Spanish flu (possibly contracted, ironically, at rehearsals for L’Aiglon, the second play in this trilogy—he wrote many other plays, however, most of them far less well-known (or popular). I reported to my StageArts bosses on three of these at their request.
[(One of these plays, The Far Princess, I didn’t know before I read it for SA; the other two, probably not coincidentally, I had read in French when I was in college. I was a French-German major and I took a class in each department on drama.)
[Rostand started writing theater pieces as a boy. He started with sketches and scenes, but he was no more than 16 when he composed his first play, unproduced and unpublished to this day: Les Petites manies (“Little manias,” 1884). He was training as a lawyer at the time, and he did take his degree and join the bar—but he never practiced. Instead, he devoted his life to poetry.
[Rostand’s first success in the theater was Les Romanesques (The Romancers, 1894), probably his second-most-famous play—but not for its own sake so much as for what was made of it later. Les Romanesques is the basis for The Fantasticks, the longest-running musical play in New York and U.S. history.
[Often seen by literary and theater critics as more of a poet than a playwright, Rostand wrote in the midst of the surge of Realism on the stages of Western theater, but was a throwback to the Romantic era. His Cyrano was a perfect example of that; so are the plays evaluated below.
[He wrote Cyrano for the actor Benoît-Constant Coquelin. Of his lesser plays, the ones evaluated below, he wrote two of them specifically for another renowned French actor: Sarah Bernhardt. In The Far Princess, she played the title part, Melissinde; in The Eaglet, she again played the title role, Napoleon II, son of the Emperor Napoleon I, a 20-year-old man.
[(In the 2018 play, Bernhardt/Hamlet by Theresa Rebeck, the playwright makes out that Bernhardt and Rostand were lovers but there’s no evidence of such a relationship and it’s pretty clear that Rebeck invented that.)
[The Far Princess (La Princesse lointaine, 1895; also translated as The Distant Princess and The Princess from Afar) premiered on 5 April 1895 in the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt (Théâtre de la Renaissance). It was a great success but ended in financial disaster for the actress.
[There was no trace of a production of The Far Princess in New York City (though both The Eaglet/L’Aiglon and Chantecler left small footprints). Cyrano has had dozens of Broadway productions over the years, and at least three Off-Broadway stagings.]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
7/4/84
[Rick]
The Far Princess (La Princesse lointaine) by
Edmond Rostand
Plot Synopsis: Prince-Poet Joffroy Rudel from Aquitaine has never seen Melissinde, Princess of the Orient and Countess of Tripoli, but her rumored beauty has inspired many of his songs and he has fallen in love with her image.
He has
embarked for Tripoli with his companion Bertrand D’Allmanon, knight and
troubadour from Provence, and a crew of sailors, his chaplain, and physician. The arduous journey has decimated the crew
and brought Joffroy to the point of death.
At last they arrive at Tripoli, and Bertrand is sent to bring Melissinde
to Joffroy’s deathbed at all costs.
The Princess
is being kept under guard by the Green Knight for the Emperor Manuel who plans
to marry her. When it is learned that a knight
has come ashore, the security is tightened.
But Bertrand fights his way through the guards, slaying the Green
Knight, and makes his way to the Princess.
He is wounded and weak, and Melissinde tends him.
She falls
in love with Bertrand and refuses to return with him to the ship and Joffroy because
she cannot face him when she loves his friend.
She confesses her love to Bertrand who at first presses her to see Joffroy
anyway to ease his death.
Finally,
they plan to stay and be lovers, but are shocked when a black sail, the sign of
Joffroy’s death, is spotted by off-stage pilgrims. When they discover that the sail is for the
Green Knight, not Joffroy, they both repent their selfishness and rush to
Joffroy before he dies.
On board,
Scarciafico, a Genoese merchant, has reported Bertrand and Melissinde’s
betrayal, but no one believes him, and he is unceremoniously tossed
overboard.
Joffroy is so near death, he cannot move, speak, or hear—only see. He spots the Princess’s barge, and Melissinde and Bertrand arrive in time to ease Joffroy’s passage into death. Bertrand, out of contrition, wants to confess his near-betrayal, but the chaplain prevents him from upsetting his friend in his last moments. Joffroy dies, and Melissinde gives her jewels to the sailors to join the crusade under Bertrand’s leadership as she joins a holy sisterhood in atonement.
Theme: Like most poetic romances, Princess touts the theme of romantic love and personal sacrifice. There is no universal truth indicated here.
Genre/Style: Classical romance.
Structure: 4 acts; unified time and action.
Setting: 2 locations: deck of Joffroy’s ship; the Princess’s apartment. 12th-century Orient/Mideast; Realism would be difficult, but a suggestion of the 2 sets would work with cleverness and imagination.
Language: Verse dialogue in 19th-century style with many classical references. There are several songs (Joffroy and Bertrand are troubadours). Much of the poetry, at least in this translation (John Heard, 1935) is unrhymed and unevenly metered, making it difficult to speak. Other translations may be available and more playable. A prose version may, in fact be best.
Characters: 2 women: 1 20’s, 1 any age; 21 men (many can be cut): 2 20’s, 1 30‘s, 4 40’s and up, remainder any age. The Green Knight is very big; Joffroy and Bertrand sing and Joffroy plays a “harp” (though any medieval string instrument would work—or it may be cut).
Evaluation: This is a very early Rostand, written in 1895
for Sarah Bernhardt. Stark Young [a
turn-of-the-century American playwright, novelist, literary critic, and translator,
among other occupations] suggests in the introduction that it is, with Cyrano
[de Bergerac, 1897], his “most achieved” work. He points out, however, several defects: “A
certain drift toward mere wordiness and unsuccessful rhetoric, a lack of spine
sometimes, a half paralysis of languorous beauty, and a failure now and then in
imaginative realization of the idea in hand . . . .”
A good deal of cutting and editing and combining other versions into a modern script could make a wonderful romantic epic of Princess, but such an endeavor and the cost of a faithfully mounted production in terms of costumes and sets would be prohibitive for StageArts at present. It might, indeed, be a project for a future season if there is interest in it.
Recommendation: Reject.
Source: NR [Nell Robinson, SA’s co-art. director]/[Rick]
* *
* *
[L’Aiglon (The Eaglet) was first performed on 15 March 1900 in Paris at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt. The title role was played by Sarah Bernhardt costumed as a man for the production and it was a triumph.
[During the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, the play was banned—I’m guessing that it was judged too “Patriotic” to France—but once Paris was liberated by the Allies, the play was performed for two consecutive years at the Théâtre du Châtelet before packed houses. Three actors and actresses shared the title role.
[In New York City, Eva Le Gallienne staged a production at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway in 1934. Le Gallienne took the title role and the cast featured Ethel Barrymore as Marie-Louise of Austria.
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
7/4/84
[Rick]
The Eaglet (L’Aiglon) by Edmond Rostand
Plot
Synopsis: Briefly, this is the story
of Napleon II, King of Rome—the only son of Napoleon Bonaparte and Marie-Louise
of Austria. Set between 1830 and ’32,
when the prince, known as the Duke of Reichstadt, is just coming into his 20’s
and discovering the dreams of glory he has inherited from his father. He has no means to realize these dreams and
dies in 1832 (of a form of tuberculosis).
Historically,
the Duke [whose nickname was L’Aiglon, French for The Eaglet] never reigned,
though he was declared King of Rome by his father while still in his cradle and
named Emperor Napoleon II in 1815 at the collapse of the First Empire
(when he was only 4).
He left Paris in 1814 and spent his life at Schönbrunn Palace [in Vienna], a semi-prisoner, with his grandfather Franz, Emperor of Austria. (Though he never sat on the imperial throne of France, when his cousin—the son of his father’s youngest brother Louis Bonaparte—declared himself emperor and began the Second Empire in 1852, he was crowned Napoleon III in recognition of the succession of “The Eaglet”)
Theme: The Eaglet is little more than an evocation of a faded grandeur and a paean to the Napoleonic Era in the manner of Victor Hugo. [Hugo, the great French writer, was an ardent monarchist, the son of a general in Napoleon I’s army, until the accession of Napoleon III, whom he denounced.] It makes no universal statement applicable to today.
Genre/Style: Romantic epic.
Structure: 6 acts (divided into many French scenes which can be ignored). The play spans 2 years and jumps about a bit around Austria (mostly near Vienna).
Setting: 1830’s Austria; palaces, chateaux. and other scenes of royalty and nobility; elaborate and grand. Realism would be prohibitive, but the flavor and feel of the court life must be evoked.
Language: Verse, mostly rhymed couplets. For the most part, it reads like dialogue, if a bit stilted and archaic. Many historical references are used.
Characters: A huge cast (doubling and cutting possible—and necessary). 10 women (plus several Ladies-in-Waiting) and 28 men, plus extras (the Royal Family, Duke’s Military Household, Emperor’s Guard, Archers, Ushers, Soldiers, etc.). All ages, including small children (several with lines).
Evaluation: This play is beyond the range of StageArts to
produce at present. The expense alone is
prohibitive, but the cast size and general scope of the script are major problems. Even the original production (in 1900,
starring Sarah Bernhardt as the Duke) had to be cut (it runs over 200 pages)
and a modern American audience would not be able to follow much of the history upon
which the play depends. (I had to look
up Napoleon II to check the facts—he is an obscure footnote in the history Americans
study of that era.)
In some future season if StageArts is interested in doing a Brechtian revision of the play, using the story and plot of The Eaglet to create a modern play, it may be possible to do so. For now, a production is out of the question. Even a cut-rate presentation would prove fruitless; unlike Shakespeare, Rostand’s poetry and themes would not stand up theatrically without the spectacle.
Recommendation: Reject.
Source: NR/[Rick]
* * * *
[Chantecler premièred in Paris on 7 February 1910 at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin. It’s had a number of revivals in France and has been made into an animated film (1991) and adapted several times for television.
[In 1911, Maude Adams played the title character on Broadway at the Knickerbocker Theatre, down at 38th Street, for 96 performances.]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
7/4/84
[Rick]
Chantecler by Edmond Rostand
Plot Synopsis: Chantecler, the farmyard rooster, is worshipped by the denizens of the barnyard but hated by the creatures of the night because for them, his voice means dawn. He is loved by the pheasant hen who flies into the barnyard pursued by a hunter.
Chantecler’s enemies plot his death and, although they fail, Chantecler’s disillusion leads him into the forest with the pheasant. There he finds that the sun will rise without him, but he cannot give up his heralding of the dawn out of his concern for the barnyard. He returns, and the pheasant, flying after him, is caught by the poacher’s net.
Theme: Like Rostand’s other plays, a celebration of the heroic spirit in the romantic vein. [The play is based on a cycle of medieval folk tales of anthropomorphic animals. Reynard the Fox is the main character in the tales, though he doesn’t figure in Rostand’s play.]
Genre/Style: Symbolist allegory in the form of a fable.
Structure: Typical 19th-century 4 acts (divided into French scenes).
Setting: Various fanciful locations, including farmyard interior, wild hillside, kitchen garden, forest. All must be oversize to put animal characters in proper relation to objects; script calls for fairly elaborate sets.
Language: Verse dialogue, including some of Rostand’s best poetry.
Characters: Very large cast; all animals suggestive of movie cartoons [Disney was going to make an animated film based on the play]. 14 women (doubling possible); 40 men, plus extras (much doubling possible—6-7 are major).
Evaluation: This was Rostand’s least successful play (and
his last compete one), though it has been produced with some success both here
and in France. Many critics think it
contains Rostand’s best writing and the allegorical people-as-animals provide
an array of lively, amusing characters.
Needless to
say, costumes would have to be designed and built along fanciful and colorful
lines, which would be both an expense and a great effort. The huge cast and long play (over 150 pages)
are major problems for StageArts.
Though an imaginative
production of Chantecler might garner critical praise, the burden would
be considerable.
This play could make an excellent “readers’ theater” presentation at some point when StageArts expands beyond its current 3 main-stage-production format. For the present, I cannot see the advantage of mounting this play.
Recommendation: Reject.
Source: NR/[Rick]
No comments:
Post a Comment