[On
14 December last, I posted the latest collection of script reports. It was devoted to plays from the classical
era rather than new scripts. Now I’ve
assembled another group of classic plays, several that precede the 19th century
(of which “More Script Reports IV” consisted), reaching back into the 17th and
18th centuries.
[I suppose it’s obvious that evaluations of old plays, whether they’re classics, like the ones from 14 December and those here, or “standards,” plays from the more recent past that are staples of theater repertoires, are less about the scripts’ quality than about their suitability for production at a particular theater (in this instance, StageArts Theater Company) and whether a production would meet its needs, budget, and capabilities.
[As I said in the introduction to “More Script Reports IV.” there are some plays here I don’t actually like, but Nell Robinson or Ruth Ann Norris, the S/A artistic directors, had an interest in them and wanted my take on them. In this batch, as in the previous one, there are plays that I knew were just out of the StageArts wheelhouse.]
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[I’d guess that most
people, even if they’re not opera buffs, have heard of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro,
known around the world as Italian operas by Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868; Il
barbiere di Siviglia, 1816) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91; Le
nozze di Figaro, 1786).
[But I suspect that few who aren’t conversant with classic French theater know that both those librettos were based on plays by the same French playwright, Pierre de Beaumarchais (1732-99). In fact, I’d be surprised if many Americans, unless they studied world literature or world drama, even know Beaumarchais.
[In a way, that’s remarkable, because Beaumarchais was more than just a dramatist of the French Enlightenment, but also a watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, spy, publisher, horticulturist, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and both American and French revolutionary.
[Beaumarchais’s life rivals his work as a drama of controversy, adventure, and intrigue. The son of a watchmaker, he invented an escapement mechanism, a device that permits controlled motion (in a watch or clock, it’s the mechanism that controls the transfer of energy from the power source to the counting mechanism).
[The question of its patent led to the first of many legal actions, for his defense against which Beaumarchais wrote a series of brilliant polemics (Mémoires contre Goëzman [“Memoirs against Goezman”], 1774), which made his reputation, though he was only partly successful in court.
[After 1773, because of his legal involvements, Beaumarchais left France on secret royal missions to England and Germany for both King Louis XV (1710-74; reigned: 1715-74) and Louis XVI (1754-93; reigned: 1774-91).
[Despite growing popularity as a dramatist, Beaumarchais was addicted to financial speculation. He bought arms for the American revolutionaries and brought out the first complete edition of the works of Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778).
[Of his dramatic works, only his two classic comedies have had lasting success. Because of his wealth, he was imprisoned during the French Revolution (in 1792), but, through the intervention of a former mistress, he was released.
[Beaumarchais didn’t invent the scheming valet character type, who appeared in comedy as far back as Roman times (3rd-2nd centuries BCE) and was prominent in commedia dell’arte (16th-18th century) and was a staple of the comedies of Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-73), but Figaro, the hero of both plays evaluated below, became the highest expression of the type. The valet’s resourcefulness and cunning were portrayed by Beaumarchais with a definite class-conscious sympathy.
[There’s a third Beaumarchais comedy with some of the same characters as his two masterworks, La Mère coupable ou l’Autre Tartuffe (1792; The Guilty Mother, or the Other Tartuffe), but it was less popular (though is occasionally still performed in France).
[The Barber of Seville, a four-act farcical drama was first performed and published in 1775 as Le Barbier de Séville; ou, la Precaution inutile (The Barber of Seville; or, The Useless Precaution). It was greeted with great popularity for Beaumarchais’s ingeniously constructed plot and lively wit.
[The Barber of Seville is an example of comedy of intrigue, a comic form in which complicated conspiracies and stratagems dominate the plot. The complex plots and subplots are often based on ridiculous and contrived situations with large doses of farcical humor. Another, perhaps more familiar example of comedy of intrigue is William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (1592-93), a humorous exploitation of the confusion resulting from twin masters and their twin servants.
[The only production of the play (as distinguished from the popular opera) in New York on record was a French presentation by the visiting Comédie Française on Broadway in 1955. I found no record of an English production either on or off Broadway until 1996-97 at the Off-Off-Broadway Pearl Theatre Company in the East Village, directed by John Rando.
[In Princeton, New Jersey, in 2014, however, the McCarter Theatre Center presented The Figaro Plays, an adaptation translated and directed by Stephen Wadsworth of two of Beaumarchais’s plays, The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. (The Guilty Mother was originally expected to part of the repertoire, but the funding fell short.) Wadsworth, instead of transposing the plays to another time and/or place, staged them in the style of the 18th century theater where they’d have débuted.]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
7/5/84
[Rick]
The Barber of Seville [Le Barbier de Séville] by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais
Plot Synopsis: Rosine succeeds in evading the advances of her amorous old guardian, Dr. Bartholo, with the aid of the barber Figaro and young Lindoro (Count Almaviva), with whom she is in love. The plot is moved along chiefly by the intrigues of Figaro and by the devices with which the Count obtains entrance into Bartholo’s house.
Theme: Young love’s defeat of old lust and ridicule of aristocracy. (In 1775, this was indicative of the coming revolution.)
Genre/Style: Farce (in the manner of Molière).
Structure: Classical 4 acts (divided into French scenes). Unified time, place, and action.
Setting: 18th-century Spain: street outside and reception room in Bartholo’s house. Need not be realistic.
Language: Prose, but highly stylized, witty, and fast-paced. There are a number of songs and several brief soliloquies.
Characters: Rosine is 18-20; 12 men: 3 20-30, 6 30-50 (4 have no lines), 3 50-60. Rosine sings; Figaro and Almaviva/Lindoro sing and play guitar. All require style and ability to handle language and period manners.
Evaluation:
(I have not read this play in English, though there is a French’s version
available [Samuel French, Inc. is a publishing company that publishes plays and
scripts, mostly so-called acting editions].)
This is the play on which [Gioachino] Rossini based his opera, and it
has a charm and energy all its own.
There may be expense in the costuming, but sets and props need not be
elaborate to suit the style of the production. The wonderful characters (especially Figaro,
a Harlequin/Scapin type) and romantic plot combined with the witty ridicule
heaped on the aristocracy makes Barber a spirited romp and a sure
audience-pleaser.
I don’t recall a recent production here [i.e., New York City] or anywhere of this farce. Few people know Beaumarchais, though both his major farces are popular operas (The Marriage of Figaro [see below] became Mozart’s opera). The title should sell itself, and the fact that it isn’t often done might shake loose some critics. I don’t think you can miss with either Beaumarchais comedy. (Besides, they’re such fun!)
Recommendation: Produce.
Source: [Rick]
[An explanation of the theater terms used above: a French scene is a scene in which the beginning and end are marked by a change in the presence of characters onstage, rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed. If a character enters or leaves the stage, a new French scene has begun.
[The three unities represent a prescriptive theory of dramaturgy that was introduced in Italy in the 16th century and was influential for three centuries. They were particularly significant in the plays of the Enlightenment, an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries—including the political philosophies of the American and French Revolutions.
[The
three unities are:
⠂the unity
of action: a play should have one principal action with no subplots
⠂the unity
of time: the action in a play should occur over a period of no more than 24
hours
⠂the unity of place: a play should exist in a single physical location.]
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[Pierre de Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro, a comedy in five acts, was first performed in 1784 as La Folle journée; ou, le Mariage de Figaro (The Madness of a Day, or the Marriage of Figaro). It’s the sequel to the comic play The Barber of Seville (see above).
[Like Barber, Marriage, the play, has been overshadowed by its operatic adaptation. In France, it gets staged regularly, but abroad, it seems someone has to have a radical take on the 18th century classic to make it stageworthy.
[In the New York area, productions since the ’80s have included a 1985 Circle in the Square version directed by Polish experimentalist Andrei Serban from a script by Richard Nelson in which Figaro soars in a swing and the cast moves about the stage on rollerskates. (New York Times writer Mel Gussow dubbed the staging, the cast of which included Anthony Heald, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Christopher Reeve, Louis Zorich, and Dana Ivey, The Barber of Starlight Express.)
[At the Yale Repertory Theater in 1994, Stan Wojewodski, Jr., mounted a collage by Eric Overmyer made up of Beaumarchais’s Marriage and Austro-Hungarian dramatist Ödön von Horváth’s (1901-38) Figaro Gets a Divorce (1936). In 2001, Off-Off-Broadway’s Target Margin Theatre put on a “deliberately wacky” production of Marriage featuring dead-pan humor.
[The next year, Off-Off-Broadway’s Jean Cocteau Repertory produced a new translation of Beaumarchais’s play, transposed to Palm Beach, Florida. The new text by Rod McLucas was directed by David Fuller, the company's artistic director. Adapted by Charles Morey, Marriage was staged by another OOB troupe, the Pearl Theatre, under the direction of Hal Brooks. In this version, the company blurs the line between the title character and playwright Beaumarchais, while straddling the gap separating pre-revolutionary France from early 21st-century America.
[In Princeton, the 2014 McCarter Theatre Center presentation of The Figaro Plays (see The Barber of Seville, above), including The Marriage of Figaro, was also part of this list.]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
7/5/84
[Rick]
The Marriage of Figaro [Le Mariage de Figaro] by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais
Plot
Synopsis: For services rendered in The
Barber of Seville (the predecessor of Marriage [see above]), Count
Amaviva has made Figaro major-domo of his castle. On the eve of his marriage to the countess’s
chambermaid, Suzanne, Figaro learns that the Count, invoking an old feudal
privilege, intends to spend the night with [Figaro’s] bride. [This was a practice known as the droit du
seigneur, the “right of the lord.”]
The ensuing battle of wits between
the powerful nobleman and the resourceful ex-barber leads to fireworks and ends
with the Count’s humiliation as he makes love to his Countess whom he mistakes
for Suzanne.
Through these confusions stumbles the page Cherubin, one of the most charming characters of French comedy, in love with every female on the stage.
Theme: A more direct criticism of rank and privilege than Barber, still surrounded by the romantic theme—young love vs. old lust. (Marriage was written in 1784—only 5 years before the revolution.)
Genre/Style: Farce.
Structure: Classical 5 acts (divided into French scenes). Unified time, place, and action.
Setting: 18th-century Spain: various interiors in Almaviva’s house; park.
Language: Prose dialogue of high style and wit. Several famous soliloquies by Figaro and several songs (though fewer than Barber).
Characters: 3 women: 2 18-25, 1 50-60; 10 men: 4 20-30 (2 minor), 4 30-50 (3 minor), 2 50-60 (1 minor), 1 boy, 14-15 (Cherubin—usually played, at the request of Beaumarchais, by a “young and very pretty woman”); 2 girls, 15. Extras: valets and peasants. The Countess sings and plays guitar; Figaro sings.
Evaluation: Marriage is a little more serious than Barber and contains more social satire. It combines elements of Molière and Dumas, but is original to Beaumarchais in its sparkling wit. My remarks regarding Barber apply here as well.
StageArts could not go wrong with either Beaumarchais. It might even be worth considering doing both together on alternate evenings or in successive productions with Almaviva, Figaro, Rosine/Countess, Bartholo, and Bazile played by the same actors in both plays. (There is even a third Beaumarchais farce with some of the same major characters, The Other Tartuffe, or the Guilty Mother, but it was not successful and I do not know it.)
Recommendation: Produce.
Source: [Rick]
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[Thomas Otway (1652-85) was an English dramatist and poet, one of the forerunners of sentimental drama through his convincing presentation of human emotions in an age of heroic but artificial tragedies. His masterpiece, Venice Preserved (1682), was one of the greatest theatrical successes of this period.
[Otway studied at Winchester College and at the University of Oxford but left in 1671 without taking a degree. He went to London, where he was offered a part by Aphra Behn (1640-89), one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, in one of her plays. He was overcome by stage fright, and his first performance was his last. His first play, a rhyming tragedy called Alcibiades (1675), was produced at the Duke’s Theatre at Dorset Garden in September 1675.
[His second play, Don Carlos, produced in June 1676, had an immense success on the stage and is the best of his rhymed heroic plays. Titus and Berenice, adapted from Jean Racine (1639-99), and The Cheats of Scapin, adapted from Molière, were published together in 1677.
[In 1678 Otway obtained a commission in an English regiment serving in the Netherlands, and he was abroad when his first comedy, Friendship in Fashion (1678), was staged. His next play, Caius Marius, a curious mixture of a story from Plutarch (46 CE-119 CE) with an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, was staged in 1679. He published his powerful, gloomy autobiographical poem, The Poet’s Complaint of His Muse, in 1680.
[Otway’s most memorable dramatic work was done in the last years of his short life. In the spring of 1680, his blank-verse domestic tragedy The Orphan had great success on the stage. On 1 March in the same year his best comedy, The Soldier’s Fortune, probably drawn from his military experience, was produced. Venice Preserved, also written in blank verse, was first performed at the Duke’s Theatre in 1682.
[Until the middle of the 19th century, Venice Preserved was probably revived more often than any poetic play except those of Shakespeare. John Dryden (1631-1700), who wrote the prologue, praised it highly. Otway’s tragedies, particularly Venice Preserved, are notable for their psychological credibility and their clear and powerful presentation of human passions.
[Venice Preserved, a Restoration drama, was the most significant tragedy of the English stage in the 1680s. It was first staged in 1682, with Thomas Betterton (1635-1710), the leading male actor during the Restoration period, as Jaffeir and Elizabeth Barry (1658-1713) as Belvidera. The play enjoyed many revivals through to the 1830s.
[In 2019, Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company staged a modern adaptation at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. In the United States, the earliest production on record was presented at Booth’s Theatre (at 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue; not to be confused with the present-day Booth Theatre on West 45th Street in the Theatre District) in 1874. The first production in the New York area in the 20th century that I could find was in 1933 at New Haven, Connecticut’s Yale Theatre, performed by student-actors in the Yale School of Drama.
[In 1955, the Phoenix Theatre presented the play with a cast that included Dana Elcar and Edward Asner, both later familiar from film and television. (Another cast member was Mark Leonard, but I can’t confirm that he’s the same actor as Mark Lenard, another film and TV actor best known as Sarek, Spock’s father in numerous Star Trek episodes and films.)]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
7/6/84
[Rick]
Venice Preserved, or a Plot Discovered by Thomas Otway
Plot Synopsis: Based on a historical Spanish conspiracy
against the Venetian Republic in 1618, the play is the story of Jaffeir, a Venetian,
who enters into a plot to kill the Venetian Senators because of his friend
Pierre. Both have reason to hate Priuli,
a member of the Senate. Priuli has
reviled and persecuted Jaffeir for 3 years, ever since he married Belvidera,
PriuIi’s daughter.
Pierre loves Aquilina, a Greek
courtesan, but she has been entertaining Priuli. Jaffeir confides the plot to his wife, who,
in deference to her father, prevails on him to abandon the conspiracy. He bargains with the Senate to expose the
plot in exchange for the conspirators’ lives.
They agree, but the plotters choose death over dishonorable life.
In the end, to thwart Priuli’s wishes, Jaffeir stabs Pierre on the scaffold rather than allow him to be hanged, and then stabs himself. Belvidera goes mad at the news and dies.
Theme: Jaffeir is torn between his duty to his friends and his love for Belvidera. It is not clear which is the right choice—both will bring disaster.
Genre/Style: Restoration [Jacobean] tragedy (though Orway was more “Elizabethan” in his depth and strength).
Structure: Classical 5 acts, several scenes. Unified time, place, and action; a subplot can be easily cut.
Setting: Various locations around 17th-century Venice. A unit setting is necessary.
Language: Blank verse; difficult and less lyrical than Shakespeare.
Characters: 2 women, 20’s; 21 men (many can be cut): 2 50-60, 2 20-30, remainder any age; extras (can be cut). The conspirators (12 aside from Jaffeir and Pierre) are a mix of nationalities; only 2 are major roles. The role of Senator Antonio is a contemporary caricature of the Earl of Shaftesbury [Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-83)] and his 2 scenes are bawdy romps and can be (and often were) cut with no damage.
Evaluation: Though Otway was compared to Shakespeare, his
work is not nearly as lofty. Like its
Restoration contemporaries, VP is heavy and brooding with little to
relieve the feeling of impending doom.
Even eminently cuttable bawdy scenes are not lusty enough to compare to
Falstaff’s or Toby Belch’s in Shakespeare [Henry IV, Part 1 &
Part 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor; and Twelfth Night,
respectively]. The catharsis at the
conclusion is not as clean as Hamlet or Othello, and Belvidera’s
death scene is very anticlimactic (and might be cutable).
Otway’s poetry is not easy and
could be a problem for many actors to bring to life. The characters, too, are difficult to
realize, and it might be very hard to make a modern audience care about the
dilemma Jaffeir, Belvidera, and Pierre are in.
The play was written in 1682—less than 70 years after the incident on
which it was based—and the facts were likely familiar to its original
audience. We could not rely on that familiarity.
It was also an allusion to the so-called
[and fictitious] Popish Plot of 1678, only 5 years earlier, in which the
English Catholics set out to destroy both King [Charles II (1630-85; reigned: 1660-85)]
and Parliament. The parallels would have
been obvious to a contemporary audience.
The fact that VP has been successful in regional reps indicates that it can be a playable script. We must question, however, whether it is advantageous for StageArts. My feeling is that at present, it is not. Otway is not very well known, but VP is not a “neglected classic”—it is produced—and its down-beat conclusion is not in StageArts’ vein. In a future season, when extra time can be spent on the script and in rehearsal (a 4-week showcase rehearsal may be insufficient for this play), presenting VP may be worthwhile.
Recommendation: Reject
Source: RAN [Ruth Ann Norris, co-artistic director of StageArts]
[I’ve used the term ‘showcase’ several times in these script report posts, but I haven’t defined it. Those readers who aren’t theater people, especially in New York City, may not know the meaning of this inside expression, which New York actors throw around casually as if everyone is conversant with it.
[According to a New York Times article on the topic, “Showcases are nonprofit productions meant to display the talents of actors to agents, casting directors and producers in the hope that they will be chosen for roles in other shows or that the play will be picked up by a producer. The actors receive no weekly salaries.” They are supposed to be compensated for transportation costs and expenses, however.
[“Showcases also present works by new playwrights and directors,” wrote Andrew L. Yarrow in the Times (“Showcase Theater, Outlet for Inspired Nobodies,” 25 November 1988). “Many producers use showcases to win potential backers, but others consider them the only affordable way to stage experimental theater in New York.”
[Since showcase productions don’t operate under an Actors’ Equity Association contract, shows that want to cast union actors or employ a union stage manager must abide by certain rules set down by Equity in the Showcase Code. These are known as “Equity showcases” and casting notices usually say so to attract union actors to the auditions. There are also many non-union showcases, in which Equity members are not supposed to perform. StageArts, of course, produced union showcases.]
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[Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) was a Belgian Symbolist poet, playwright, and essayist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911 for his outstanding works of the Symbolist theater. He wrote in French and looked mainly to French literary movements for inspiration.
[Maeterlinck studied law at the University of Ghent, where he was born, and was admitted to the bar in that city in 1886. In Paris in 1885-86, he met Auguste Villiers de L’Isle-Adam (1838-89) and the leaders of the Symbolist movement, and he soon abandoned law for literature. His first verse collection, Serres chaudes (“Hothouses”), and his first play, La Princesse Maleine, were published in 1889.
[Maeterlinck made a dramatic breakthrough in 1890 with two one-act plays, L’Intruse (The Intruder) and Les Aveugles (The Blind). His Pelléas et Mélisande (1892), produced in Paris at the avant-garde Théâtre de l’Oeuvre by the director Aurélien Lugné-Poë (1869-1940), is the unquestioned masterpiece of Symbolist drama and provided the basis for a 1902 opera by Claude Debussy (1862-1918). Though written in prose, Pelléas et Mélisande may be considered the most accomplished of all 19th-century attempts at poetic drama.
[Maeterlinck wrote many other plays, including historical dramas such as Monna Vanna (1902). Gradually, his Symbolism was tempered by his interest in English drama, especially William Shakespeare and the Jacobeans (1603-25). Only L’Oiseau bleu (The Blue Bird, 1908) rivaled Pelléas et Mélisande in popularity. First performed by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1908, this somewhat sentimental dramatic parable was highly regarded for a time, but its charm has evaporated, and the optimism of the play now seems facile.
[After he won the Nobel Prize, however, Maeterlink’s reputation declined, although his Le Bourgmestre de Stilmonde (The Burgomaster of Stilmonde, 1917), a patriotic play in which he explores the problems of Flanders under the wartime rule of an unprincipled German officer, briefly enjoyed great success.
[In his Symbolist plays, Maeterlinck uses poetic speech, gesture, lighting, setting, and ritual to create images that reflect his protagonists’ moods and dilemmas. Often the protagonists are waiting for something mysterious and fearful that will destroy them. The profound and moving atmosphere of the plays, though lacking in intellectual complexity, is augmented by tentative dialogue, based on half-formed suggestions, at times naively repetitious, and occasionally sentimental, but sometimes possessed of great subtlety and power.
[As a dramatist, Maeterlinck influenced Hugo von Hofmannsthal (Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist; 1874-1929), W. B. Yeats (Irish poet, dramatist, and prose writer; 1865-1939), John Millington Synge (Irish playwright, poet, writer, and collector of folklore; 1871-1909), and Eugene O’Neill (American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature; 1888-1953). Maeterlinck’s plays have been widely translated, and no Belgian dramatist had greater effect on worldwide audiences.
[Maeterlinck’s prose writings are remarkable blends of mysticism, occultism, and interest in the world of nature. They represent the common Symbolist reaction against materialism, science, and mechanization and are concerned with such questions as the immortality of the soul, the nature of death, and the attainment of wisdom. Maeterlinck was made a count by the Belgian king in 1932.
[Aglavaine et Sélysette was first performed in December
1896. Maeterlinck was 34 when he wrote the
play, which was inspired by actress Georgette Leblanc (1869-1941), the sister
of the novelist Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941), whom Maeterlinck had met a year
earlier. She was 26 years old, and was
destined for a career as an opera singer. With this play, the Belgian author said he’d gone
from shadow to light. He wanted to
detach himself from the force of fate that ran through the plays that had made
him famous.
[New York-area productions of Aglavaine and Selysette I could identify began with a 1914 performance, given outdoors on “The Green” on New York University’s main campus in the Bronx by the English department, followed by a special 1916 performance by the renowned Washington Square Players only for the troupe’s subscribers.
[The latest presentation was a 1920 mounting at Maxine Elliott’s Theatre on West 39th Street. The production’s star was Eva le Gallienne (1899-1991).
[Symbolism was a late-19th-century art movement of French, Belgian, and Russian origin in poetry and other arts, including drama, seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against Naturalism and Realism, which were quickly becoming the dominant theatrical styles of the era.
[In symbolist plays, the sets and props are often unrealistic and are used to evoke a threatening atmosphere to the audience.]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
7/6/84
[Rick]
Aglavaine and Selysette [Aglavaine et Sélysette] by Maurice
Maeterlinck
Plot Synopsis: Aglavaine, the widow of Selysette’s brother, comes to live with Selysette; her husband, Meleander; her grandmother; and little sister. Though Meleander loves Selysette, he finds he also loves Aglavaine, who loves both him and Selysette. And Selysette loves both of them. The “eternal triangle” becomes inextricably complicated when Aglavaine decides she must leave to let Selysette and Meleander’s love survive. When she hears this, Selysette, believing that Meleander could not love her as much as he loves Aglavaine, throws herself (or falls accidentally?) from the castle turret.
Theme: People struggling vainly against Fate; what is beautiful cannot take the place of what is merely human. It is the story of the endeavor—and failure—of noble souls to act nobly.
Genre/Style: Symbolist drama.
Structure: 5 acts, several scenes. Action and place are unified; time is unspecific and vague.
Setting: Several locations in and near the castle home of Selysette and Meleander. Unlocalized unit set, probably in symbolist style, is necessary.
Language: Maeterlinck’s prose is almost poetry and requires skill and sensitivity to realize. His symbolistic style is subtle and delicate. There is a song which Selysette sings on several occasions, and several long monologues.
Characters: 4 women: 1 10-12, 1 16-18, 1 20-25, 1 50’s; 1 man, 20’s. Both Aglavaine and Selysette are beautiful, but Aglavaine must be striking and unusually so—almost ethereal. Aglavaine, Selysette, and Meleander must have extraordinary ability to handle delicate, poetic language and make it sound real and comfortable.
Evaluation: This is a lovely, moving, and sad play that
is both unusual and beautiful. It is a
little slow-moving and will not be easy to perform. The tendency to push the romantic elements
and turn it into a soap opera must be avoided.
The language, even in translation, is special and must be handled with
special care and a light touch. Producing
A&S would be a gamble, but I suspect it would pay off in the end.
Maeterlinck, one of the theater’s foremost Symbolists, is known for nearly only one play—The Blue Bird (and a little for Pelleas and Melisande). Presenting one of his lesser-known works would be theatrically significant.
Recommendation: Second reading.
Source: [Rick]
[Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946) was an English dramatist, producer, and critic whose repertoire seasons and Shakespeare criticism profoundly influenced 20th-century theater.
[Granville-Barker began his stage training at 13 and first appeared on the London stage two years later. He preferred work with William Poel’s (1852-1934) Elizabethan Stage Society and Ben Greet’s (1857-1936) Shakespeare repertory company to a West End career, and in 1900 he joined the experimental Stage Society.
[His first major play, The Marrying of Ann Leete (1900), was produced by the society. In 1904 he became manager of the Court Theatre with J. E. Vedrenne (1867-1930) and introduced the public to the plays of Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), Maurice Maeterlinck, John Galsworthy (1867-1933), John Masefield (1878-1967), and Gilbert Murray’s (1866-1957) translations from Greek.
[Granville-Barker’s original productions of the early plays of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) were especially important. His wife, Lillah McCarthy (1875-1960), played leading roles in many of the plays he produced. Among new plays produced at the Court Theatre were several of his own: The Voysey Inheritance (1905), the most famous, showing Shaw’s influence; Prunella (1906), a charming fantasy written with Laurence Housman (1865-1959); Waste (1907); and The Madras House (1910).
[Also revolutionary was his treatment of Shakespeare. Instead of traditional scenic decor and declamatory elocution, Barker successfully introduced, in the Savoy productions (1912-14) of The Winter’s Tale and Twelfth Night, continuous action on an open stage and rapid, lightly stressed speech. He and theater critic William Archer (1856-1924) were active in promoting a national theater, and by 1914 Barker had every prospect of a brilliant career.
[After World War I, however, during which he served with the Red Cross, he found the mood of the postwar theater alien and contented himself with work behind the scenes, including presidency of the British Drama League. He settled in Paris with his second wife, an American, collaborating with her on translating Spanish plays and writing his five series of Prefaces to Shakespeare (1927-48), a contribution to Shakespearean criticism that analyzed the plays from the point of view of a practical playwright with firsthand stage experience.
[In 1937 Barker became director of the British Institute of the University of Paris. He fled to Spain in 1940 and then went to the United States, where he worked for British Information Services and lectured at Harvard University. He returned to Paris in 1946.
[The Voysey Inheritance is a play in five acts written in 1903–1905. It was originally staged at the Royal Court Theatre in 1905 and revived at the same venue in 1965, the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 1989, and at the National Theatre in 1989 and 2006.
[Of modern stagings, the 1990 adaptation by James Luse at New Haven, Connecticut’s Long Whart Theatre transported the action from London to Boston in the 1900s. In 1999, the Off-Off-Broadway Mint Theatre did the original version (in a production which I saw). The troupe revived the production the following January.
[In 2006, American playwright David Mamet wrote what Charles Isherwood of the New York Times called a “canny new adaptation” (7 December 2006) of the play for New York’s Atlantic Theatre Company (of which Mamet is a founder). Fritz Weaver (1926-2016) starred as the patriarch of the Voysey family.
[(In December 2008, financier Bernard L. Madoff (1938-2021) was arrested in Manhattan for securities fraud. Immediately, parallels with Granville-Barker’s Voysey family were noted. After Madoff pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 150 years in prison for the huge Ponzi scheme he’d perpetrated, Neil Pepe, the artistic director of the Atlantic Theater, was quoted in the Times saying: “It’s almost verbatim the story of ‘The Voysey Inheritance,’ which was written 100 years earlier.”)]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
8/19/84
[Rick]
The Voysey Inheritance by Harley Granville-Barker
Plot: Edward Voysey learns from his father that the
older man has been stealing from his clients’ funds for many years. Edward chooses to stay with the firm to keep
matters from becoming worse, and when the old man dies suddenly, Edward is
faced with the choice of letting the thefts be known and putting an end to the
secrecy, or continuing the machinations in order to put the money back before
anyone outside the family learns of the situation.
For various reasons, not all of
them honorable, the Voysey family prevails on Edward to continue the practices
of old Mr. Voysey—and he begins by replacing the money looted from the accounts
of the poorer clients, those who would be beggared should the firm go bankrupt.
All seems to be going well, though
Edward is under great stress and would prefer to be found out and put an end to
the situation, until an old client of great wealth demands his funds in
toto. Edward, almost relieved at last to
be out from under the pressure, tells him the truth.
In the end, however, with the advice and assistance of a young woman with whom he had long been in love, Edward manages to keep things as they are in order to put things right.
Theme: Sometimes the only way to do the right thing is to do the wrong thing. Edward must do the wrong thing (not reporting a crime) for the right reasons (to prevent clients from losing their savings).
Genre/Style: Realistic drama.
Structure: Well-made play in 5 acts.
Setting: 2 sets, both realistic: Voysey office and family dining room. Set in early 20th century (1905) England, but may be up-dated and transferred to US with some small editing.
Language: Realistic dialogue, not at all stilted or anachronistic.
Characters: Large cast, but a number of roles are
cuttable: 8 women: 1 60’s, 2 40’s, 1 30’s, 4 20’s; 10 men: 2 60’s, 2 50’s, 1
40’s, 1 30’s, 3 20’s, 1 9-15 (all ages are adjustable 5-10 years either way,
but the age-relationships need to remain the same).
This is really an ensemble play, except for the role of Edward, and each of the characters has a fairly strong personality, though some may be a little stereotyped by today’s standards. Cutting some of the smaller roles would be easy, and even some of the others may be excised with a little care and rewriting. The central roles would be good showcases for actors.
Evaluation: This would undoubtedly make an interesting
production if some adjustments are made.
Granville-Barker is a recognizable theater name, but his plays are not
often done here. There is nothing in
this play that is dated or topical—it’s a universal situation that could happen
as easily today as 80 years ago.
The two sets could be combined by a judicious “relocating” of the play so that all the scenes can be performed in one place, and several characters can be cut/combined to reduce the cast size. Some of the talkier scenes will need to be trimmed, but that would be an easy task. In the end, this would make an excellent choice for a S/A season in a revival slot.
Recommendation: Possible production.
Source: [Rick]
Rights: Last known to be held by [Samuel] French. (Editions are out of print—will have to xerox library copy for use.)
[A well-made play is a form of dramaturgy that arose in France in the late 19th century (la pièce bien faite) involving a tight plot, a largely standardized structure, and a climax close to the end. The story usually depends on a key piece of information kept from some characters, but not the audience, and moves forward in a chain of actions that use minor reversals of fortune to create suspense.
[The genre was common at the turn of the 20th century, but modern writers like Alan Ayckbourn (b. 1939) and Noël Coward (1899-1973) continued to use it. Even greats like Shaw and Ibsen applied the form to their work.]
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